


Clouded Vision

by starrfleet



Series: Series 9 Extravaganza [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Character Death, Complete, Cunnilingus, F/M, FOR EACH EPISODE don't read until you've watched, Fingering, Fluff, I blame moffat, I don't know what's happening, Memory Loss, Oral Fixation, Oral Sex, Pain, Phone Sex, Semi-established relationship, Series 9, Smut, So much angst, Spoilers, Stripping, THIS IS FINE EVERYTHING IS FINE, Touch Telepathy, almost quite literally, dirty talk if you squint, goodbye Clara, he's so blind, heels kink, i'm in denial, i'm so upset, i'm trash, intense angsty fingering, irreversible statements, life through the eyes of a shipper, like for a second, mention of clara's death, questionable underwear (pun intended), semi because it's the same as the show they're basically fucking canon anyway, silliness, slight amnesia, sort of, sucking fingers, the TARDIS is on Clara's side, the doctor is a fucking idiot basically, the doctor thinks he's the universe's greatest tease, the universe heard you guys doing it, this is fucking agonising, time loops, when in fact clara has him wrapped around her finger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:49:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrfleet/pseuds/starrfleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of ficlets following series 9. Alternating points of view, a good deal of kissing, lots of unspoken declarations, reasonable slow build(ish), and a hefty amount of angst for good measure. One chapter per episode, though there will be spin offs. Smutty chapters are 5, 6, 8, and 9 if you squint. Spoilers for the whole series. I'm no good at summaries.</p><p>We're all still in denial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Magician's Apprentice: Pretty Woman

**Author's Note:**

> I can't help myself. I had the idea to do this for series 8 but inevitably didn't, so I'm doing it now. I can only see Twelve/Clara, my vision is filled with these two fucking idiots. This is a mess.
> 
> Characters belong to the BBC and though I never thought I'd say it, thank you for that beautiful ridiculous episode.

“Oh, hang on, did he just hear that? He doesn’t know we’re here does he?”  
Hardly before she’s finished speaking, she hears the guitar riff. She snaps her head back round, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She recognises that tune.

 _Really? Pretty Woman?_ She asks him across the expanse with a lift of her brows, knowing he’s meeting her gaze even through the sunglasses. Her heart leaps, and she can only see him, him and his stupid hair and scruffy clothes, him and his inexplicable sunglasses and electric guitar as he walks forward as if to meet her, to sweep her up. She grins despite herself, clamping down on the expression as soon as she realises she’s being so obvious. He stops and turns to talk to the crowd, and Clara spins, all but propelling herself down the stairs to see him.

She hears him speaking with an exaggerated accent (somehow he never seems to get better at those) as he walks about the ground, in what she can only describe as a Shakespearean manner. He must have met him at some point, _surely_.

She watches in disbelief and confusion (a small dose of foreboding circling in the back of her mind) as he finally turns to look at her.

“But! Before I do…” at this, he looks at her, solely at her, and she can feel a shiver down her spine. The intensity of his gaze, the sheer undivided focus, ripples through her. He’s talking to the crowd but it’s like there’s no one else there. “I’d like you to meet, a couple of friends of mine,” he lowers his glasses, a cheeky smile that doesn’t reach his eyes plastered on his face as he nods to missy, and then looks back to her. She can finally see his eyes and she vaguely thinks she sees a flash of something, but he slides the glasses back up his nose and steps back.

Clara walks out, mildly embarrassed, baffled and admittedly, a little excited, the Doctor watching her every step. She reaches him, and though she needn’t, she half whispers, still smiling because he’s here, _he’s there right in front of her_.

“How did you know I was here, did you see me?”  
He leans forward, closing the space between them as he answers, his words riding a helpless sigh. “When do I not see you?”  
“What one face in all of that crowd?”  
He frowns, barely even registering said crowd around them. She thinks he’s doing this for comedic effect, to lighten the mood, and that worries her. “There was a crowd, too?”  
“Wow, we’re doing charm as well now we are? Which one of us is dying?” She jokes, half laughing, but then his face does this thing and she can feel her smile falter.

Without warning, he grabs her, almost roughly, by her shoulders to pull her into a hug. _Okay, not good, definitely not good_. Automatically her arms are around him, his head resting on her shoulder and she knows, _she knows_ this is bad. Hugs are one thing, but this, this is something else. “Okay, and we’re doing hugging now, too. Can’t keep up.”  
“Well you know what they say, hugging is a great way to hide your face.” His voice sounds like it’s breaking and without knowing why Clara can feel her eyes prickling with tears. Something’s wrong. Something’s so wrong.  
“Okay, look, I guessed a party,” she says, pulling back, spooked to her core that not only did _he_ initiate the hug, but he also didn’t pull away, _she_ was the one to move back, “but not like this, what is this?” Without meaning, her left hand reaches up to cup his cheek, and she lets the worry that’s building reflect in her voice, “This isn’t you.”  
He lifts his sunglasses onto his head, then leans down to press his mouth against hers. Her heart stutters as he kisses her, full of desperation and sorrow and an ache she can’t name. By the time her brain catches up with her body, she’s already kissing him back but then he moves back, a shaky breath ghosting her lips. He presses a gentle kiss to her lips and speaks.

“Spent all day yesterday wearing a bow tie,” her heart clenches, “the day before in a long scarf,” his eyes are searching hers, flickering with words unsaid, hanging all around them like stars, almost _clinging_ to her. Then his glasses drop, and the air shatters. Her hand drops.

“It’s my party. And all of me is invited.” He speaks with an almost aggressive air. Like he has to justify himself. Like he has to give right to his own existence. He starts playing the guitar again and moves away from her. She watches him as he walks around her, towards Missy.

“What the hell are you up to, man?” Clara’s vaguely away of Missy talking to him, of him talking back, in the weird aggressive fighting/flirting thing they do. Yet all she can feel is his lips on hers, his hand that slipped down to her own, squeezing gently like she was something precious, breakable by his touch alone. All she can feel is that look he gave her, like he was memorising her very soul, her very being. She feels that gaze still, even as his back is to her.

He’s being reckless. This whole thing, this whole debacle, _he’s being reckless_. It’s desperate, it’s careless, it’s manic, bordering on hysterical. It feels like a defeat. An admission. A last hurrah. Her eyes never leave his form.

But then someone’s choking and Clara’s instincts kick in. She runs to help but the Doctor’s already there, muttering something about marbles before he pulls a snake unseen from the man’s neck and throws it to the side. And then things really get disturbing.

A man apparently made from snakes, the Doctor barking his negotiation, taunting and biting in his replies. Goading. _Reckless_. Clara wants to smack him, shake him, kiss him, punch him. There’s too much happening too fast. His screwdriver is thrown at his feet and Clara frowns, horror seeping into her bones, writhing across her skin in an icy caress.

“That’s yours.” It’s not quite a statement, not quite a question.  
“Ah it was.” There’s a look creeping up on him, too, but it’s not dread, not horror.  
“ _Was_?” She stares at him, willing somehow, _somehow_ for this to not be as bad as it’s possibly going.  
“I don’t have a screwdriver anymore…”  
“Oh… never seen that before… Doctor, the look on your face. What is that?”  
Clara knows. She knows what that is.  
“Shame.” Her eyes never leave his face, though he doesn’t look up, “You’re ashamed.” She steps closer, determined to know but terrified of the answer, “Doctor. What have you done?”

He looks at her and away, his eyes keep flickering to reach her face but never her eyes. He walks past her. There’s more words, more talking _so much talking_ but Clara can’t hear it, only white noise that blankets everything. It’s worse than horror, worse than dread. It goes deeper than that, it’s more sinister.

“Goodbye” is the word that brings her back to reality. He says it with a finality she’s never heard before. Not even when they said goodbye in that café, not then. She looks at him, watches him as he walks backwards, nearing her. She doesn’t say anything. She can’t. There’s an iron grip around her throat, squeezing the air from her.

He looks at her and stops. He leans down, and kisses her. He doesn’t close his eyes and neither does she. It’s different this time, softer, briefer. So very intimate. It makes her chest hurt and her throat constrict tighter, her hands balling into fists so she doesn’t get lost in the depth of anguish in his eyes. His lips leave hers but his eyes stay, and when he speaks, it’s whispered and crackles like broken glass. “Goodbye, Clara.”

He turns away, and she looks immediately to Missy. _Come on_ , Clara thinks, _come on!_ Missy looks at her for a fraction of a second but it’s all she needs. “We’re coming with him. Both of us. Her and me.”

His response is both immediate and thunderous, but she steadfastly ignores him, ignores the prickle in her eyes and the way her heart is juddering. She ignores him even as they’re transported aboard, shouting his horror into nothing. For a while, he glares across at her, anger and despair flickering across his face.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” He breaks the silence, and they both ignore Missy rolling her eyes and muttering beside them.  
“Too late now.”   
“Yes, it is isn’t it?” There’s venom in his voice, but she knows he’s using it to disguise whatever’s going on underneath that steely exterior. Anger to hide the distress. Silence climbs its way back between them and settles. Clara doesn’t know who she wants to kick more; herself or him. She watches him closely, watches his gaze flick up to hers and away again several times.  
She waits until he looks at her for longer than a second, then leans forward refusing to break contact. “I wasn’t going to leave you.”  
His face softens, albeit only a fraction. He’s still frowning at her, still glaring, but there’s a subtle tenderness at the corner of his eyes that she catches. He murmurs her name and shifts as if to touch her, but comes up against his ties and huffs in annoyance. To distract him, and also herself, she asks him about what the hell is going on.  
He explains, tells her about Davros. About him being a mutant with some kind of sadistic want to destroy everything in creation, even his own people. She knows about the Daleks, she knows enough but this is something different. The gravity of the words seem to pull the dark in around them, stretching out the smallest of shadows so their depth appears bottomless. She shudders.

They’re in the prison cell, hospital cell, _whatever it is_ , cold and clinical and dank. The snake-man (man-snake?) arrives to take him away and she immediately goes to stand by the Doctor. She has to stay. She has to stay while he goes on to face his archenemy, alone. While he goes to face the dark, the epitome of all living nightmares, _alone_ , she has to stay. Stand and wait.

“Doctor!” She can’t let him leave without doing something, _saying_ something. He turns back to face her and she walks right up to him. “You sent Missy your confession dial.”  
He looks confused, “Well, we’ve known each other a long time, she’s one of my own people.” “My point is we both saw her die on earth, ages ago. And obviously you knew that wasn’t real or _worse_ ,” she emphasis the word, “hoped it wasn’t. Either way, I think you’ve been lying.”  
He has, he has and she knows it and she hates him for it. Hates that they do this to each other. Lie to protect the other. Lie to hide their feelings. Lie because they don’t know how to talk, how to deal with whatever it is that’s going on between them.  
He looks into her eyes and she wants to be sick. It’s a look she never wants to see, and then he says “I’m sorry,” and that’s somehow worse. She feels sick to her stomach. _What’s happening this can’t be happening he kissed me he can’t do this now._

“Don’t apologise, make it up to me.” The words come out of her aggressively, determined. She needs this. This will work. This has to work. “There, see ha,” she smiles though she knows it looks fake. She feels like she’s verging on insanity, she _needs_ this, she needs him to come back. She tilts her head and leans up on her tiptoes to kiss him. She kisses him and _christ_ this can’t be the first and last time she ever does this. She thinks of how deeply she feels for him, how deeply he’s knitted himself into her bones, how much she needs him. How every breath she takes she wants to give to him. How every beat of her heart belongs to him. Clara vaguely remembers him telling her something about Time Lords and touch telepathy; hopes she isn’t wrong. “Now you have to come back.”

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t nod, he doesn’t wink, he doesn’t come back with some stupid retort. He barely moves. His eyes never leave her face, drinking her in, until the last second before he turns and leaves, ambiguously muttering “Gravity,” to Missy before he’s out the door.

Clara watches him, walking towards to the door as it closes. Memorising every feature she can. She sucks in a deep breath, turns and looks to Missy.

“Gravity?”


	2. The Witch's Familiar: Some Kind of Fucked Up Blockbuster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor thinks he's lost her again and it's like he can't breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my defence, I'm living in a very remote place with astoundingly awful internet, and no television. So my being up to date with each episode and writing and uploading is a little too much for the poor bandwidth up here (forever curse it).
> 
> As always, I have no beta and am prone to make numerous spelling and grammatical errors (sometimes hilarious ones) and I own nothing (apart from a great love of these two fucking morons).

He’s never been more aware of the lack of her. He’s lost her before, so many times, _so many_ , but he always found her again. They were echoes of her, mere fractions of her being, but this is different, this is worse… he’s lost her. Not just Clara but _his_ Clara. His Clara that’s lived and breathed and betrayed and steadfastly devoted herself to him. A constant variable in his life. She’s stitched herself into his very marrows, weaved her way inside and settled, integrating herself to become one with him. And now she’s _gone_.

He tries to put it into words but nothing comes close. It’s knocked the air out of him, like he’s winded, drowning and suffocating at the same time. Worse he feels _nothing_. There’s nothing left of him. There’s the noise of shattering. There’s silence, cursed and blessed, battling aggressively with the other. Everything is still moving, the universe is still burning itself out, eager to hurl itself and everything out of existence, if only given time. He feels everything and nothing all at once, has become the manifestation of contradiction. He burns from his nerve endings, alight in quietus.

Now, now he has nothing. He once had the universe in his hands, the universe smiling and laughing with him, holding him and calling him names with more fondness than he could ever deserve. Kissing the universe, whole constellations filling her eyes. The universe disguised as a woman.

He runs because it’s all he’s ever known how to do. Runs, beats the Daleks, saves the day. It’s like he’s trapped in some kind of fucked up blockbuster: ‘Hero loses love of his life and in his anguish vanquishes the devil, saves the world. Hazzah.’ It sickens him. Everything about it is so cliché, so predictable, so _unremarkable_. He runs until he falls, runs until his fingers touch the black, touch death. Runs until he sees another. Another Dalek, another reminder, another knife in his side. Always recrudescing.

A glimmer of light ignites itself in his hearts. He has to try. He _has_ to.

“The city’s gonna be sucked into the ground, your own sewer is about to consume you, there’s no way you can win there’s nothing you can do so just tell me, where is Clara Oswald!” He argues with it, insensible as it seems, repeating I AM A DALEK like a mantra and it hurts. It beats against his skull, battling with _she can’t be dead I can’t lose her again she can’t be_ , and _please Clara please be alive I love you please_.

“Doctor stop!” Missy. His friend, his enemy. She starts, speaks, words falling about the air, worming their way into his head. “Clara’s dead, Doctor” the words hurtle themselves at him and he feels his knees weaken but he won’t allow them the treachery. She’s lied, she’s lied before, so many times, so often, so habitually it's the only thing he trusts her to do, and yet. The words grate against him, dig sharpened nails into his flesh raising blood and anger and a wretchedness he never recalls feeling before. She keeps talking, keeps writhing her way into his head until he wants to scream. (I AM A DALEK I AM A DALEK I AM A DALEK)

He feels metal in his hand, Missy at his back, his eyes never leaving the creature in front of him. (DO NOT KILL ME DO NOT KILL ME) Rage swells, engulfing him whole. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t suffer this punishment, deserved or not. “Is Clara dead!” The words erupt from him, filling the room, ringing off the walls ( _please Clara please I love you please_ ). He feels it building inside him, feels it under skin, crawling and devouring him. He renews his stance, points the gun higher but nothing helps, she’s not coming back, she’s dead, she’s lost she’s—

MERCY! MERCY!

“You shouldn’t be able to say that…” it jolts through him like a bolt. He’s torn between hope and anger, confusion and despair. This isn’t right, this is all _wrong, everything is so wrong_. (MERCY!) “That word shouldn’t exist in your vocabulary, how did Davros teach you to say that!”

MERCY!

“Why aren’t you trying to kill me!” There’s so much pain, blinding and white hot behind his eyes, in his chest, spreading like wildfire in his bones, he can’t think straight. ( _She can’t be dead I can’t lose her Clara please_ ) It’s wrong, and it’s too much. Too much has happened. He’s sinking into depths of the ocean, overrun by time and life and hope and death staring him too many times in the face.

I… SHOW… MERCY!

The words are pained, they’re slow and sluggish, struggling to show themselves. Pulling themselves out of the black of the night. He looks to Missy, his hearts simultaneously freezing and pounding.

“I’m putting the gun down, open your casing.” He grits his teeth, the command rippling through the air. (HOW!) “Just think the word open, it’ll work.” He doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to even contemplate what’s inside, doesn’t think he can get past this bone weary exhaustion that’s poisoned him, but then everything disappears into the ether and he almost drops to his knees and sobs. _Clara_.

There’s not enough air in his lungs, not enough air in the universe. His body vibrates with the need to touch her, to make sure she’s real she’s unhurt she’s there right in front of him. ( _You’re_ alive _I love you you’re alive you’re alive_ ) “Missy. _Run_.” He’s almost surprised at the way his words snarl and rip from his throat, like they could reach out and tear her apart. He’s frozen, caught between so many emotions, clamping him in an iron grip to space he’s existing in, he can’t move because she’s _right there_ he thought he’d lost he again, _again_ , and she’s there—

“Doctor.” Time shatters, the gun clattering to the ground as he runs to her. Immediately his hands reach for her face; he can hear everything in her voice. He never thought he’d hear her voice again. But he hears it, hears all the people they’ve ever saved, everything they’ve ever done, the smiles, the looks, the glances, the touches, the _kiss_. Hope illuminating her voice when she told him he had to come back, the worry clouded by something deeper, hotter, when he’d kissed her once just _once_.

“I’m sorry, Clara, I’m so sorry,” the words fall out of his mouth in their desperation, his hands cradling her face, hearts pounding _she’s alive she’s alive she’s alive_ with every beat. He wants to drink her in, wants to pour her into his body so he can keep her safe, so he can hide her from the hate and the pain this universe savagely hurls at the life residing. He’s dimly aware of Missy still standing there, talking, his rage swelling anew and he hisses darkly over his shoulder, “ _I said run_.”

He leans back just slightly, enough to see more of Clara, enough that can still feel the fear and the relief crashing from her, mixing in the air around them with so many unsaid words and frantic feelings. “I’ll get you out, I’ll get you out, I’ll fix this you’re safe you’re safe,” he sounds hysterical even to his own ears but can’t find himself to care because she’s finally in his hands again, she’s gripping his jacket tightly and it’s so genuine so blindingly _real_ he can barely manage coherent thought. _I’ll never leave you I’ll never let anyone hurt you you’re safe I love you I love you_.

Her eyes never leave his face as he feverishly twists and pulls and shakes, desperate to get it off her to get her out to just fucking _hold her_. He can’t do it fast enough, he’s too unsteady, too emotional, the wires are everywhere, _she’s in pain_ , nothing is working what if this kills her? What if he’s the one to kill her as he’s trying to save her? He half laughs, trembling and panic stricken, desperation seeping into his every move because he knows that’s the kind of sick irony life seems to relish throwing at him.

Finally, _fucking finally_ , he manages to unplug her (she moans in pain, the noise gnawing at his nerve ends). He helps her out, touching her skin like she’s made of glass, afraid to hurt her afraid to hold her. “Clara,” he breaths, hands shaking as they whisper against her cheek, “my Clara.” He can’t stop staring at her. She looks so tired, so weary and so _human_. His blood is roaring in his ears, his breathing erratic, his body swaying with _I love you you’re safe I love you I love you Clara my Clara_.

Eventually he gives up fighting and crushes against him, relishing the whisper of a sigh that graces his ears as her arms clutch at him. She’s murmuring reassurances (“I’m okay, I’m okay”), baffling him at the absurdity of her comforting him, but she knows him so well, so profoundly he can only hold her tighter. He breathes her in, becomes hyper aware of every point where she’s pressed against him, rubs her back, clutches her closer, but it’s not enough. Enveloped in his arms it’s still not enough, so he begins kissing her shoulders, her hair, shifting so he can kiss her forehead, her cheekbones, her nose, her temples (he trembles as his lips touch the spots where the wires were devouring her), her lips. All the time she repeats, “I’m okay” but he’s not sure who she’s trying to convince. Her utterances stumble against his lips so he kisses her more soundly, accentuating every movement, every breath they share. They kiss slowly, desperately, clinging to the other until she whispers his name like a reverence and he feels lost, words tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop them, “I thought I’d lost you.”

She snorts quietly, fisting his lapels and pulls herself closer if it were at all possible, “Can’t get rid of me that easily.” She sucks in a shaky breath and he can physically see her yank herself together and square her shoulders.

“Don’t even joke.” He aims for fierce, but his voice comes out desperate and pathetic. _Scared_. He kisses her forehead to hide his face, just for a second, just so he can pull his mask back on as he watched her do seconds previous. They smile wearily, almost shyly at one another before he takes her hand. “We’re not out of the woods yet, Clara Oswald.”


	3. Under the Lake: Mysterious Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara gets ideas into her head when she's handed an earpiece and god help him, the Doctor just can't resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even believe I wrote this. I DON'T KNOW. I just had this idea in my head that as soon as they were talking on them I was immediately like 'Clara is 100% keeping those and using them for more mischievous purposes'. I will no doubt at some point this series write some actual smut, but it didn't feel right just yet.
> 
> No beta, no shame, and no ownership of this show. Forgive me.

“You’re itching to save a planet I know it.” He thinks that’s what probably starts it all. That phrase, and that _look_ she gives him, challenging smirk and suggestive eyebrows. Sauntering off in front of him, filled with adventure and excitement for the unknown. He hadn’t stood a chance. Not when she smiled at him like that, not when she quirked her brows and gave him that _come hither_ look (something he would later swear on his 12 lives that she did). He’d smiled at her back as she’d walked on, fondness and longing mingling with something quite heady he didn’t want to put a name on (but did anyway). He couldn’t help the smirk that slipped onto his face, couldn’t help how his chest ached, how his pulse fluctuated and hearts stuttered.

He thinks of all the idiotic clothing she wears and somehow, this is the one that will do him in. There’s nothing special about it either, which makes it worse. It’s not short (flashes of a red tartan skirt jump into his mind fleetingly), it doesn’t show tantalising patches of skin (deep blue dress with cut outs made for his eyes), it’s not even tight fitting, really. And the jumper? _Awful_ colour. Just horrendous. But then Clara wears it like it was made for her because it makes her eyes a deep molten chocolate that he just wants to dive into, and honestly, he’s never quite grasped the history of mustard anyway so who’s to say it wasn’t. Heels, as always, because she’s too short or he’s too tall or they’re both a mix of the in-between, he’s not really sure, and that’s it. And _god_ he wants to peal them off her. He manages somehow, _somehow_ , not to be too touchy. He smirks a lot and lifts his eyebrows in what he hopes is a suggestive manner though he’s worried it just looks more like a workout for his face. But she grins and peppers him with fleeting kisses, teases him with her looks and her winks and a glimmer of her tongue on his own when they kiss.

Amidst the running and the ghosts ( _real_ ghosts) they have a few heated moments in corridors. Once before she makes him pull the cards out, he presses her up against the wall and kisses her until her knees weaken and she’s gasping as she clutches at his lapels. He gives her a Talk in the TARDIS, warns her not to go overboard, not to fall in too deep, afterwards feeling so awkward he doesn’t know what to do but kiss her because she’s suddenly sans one layer and it distracts them both from him trying so painfully to Show That He Cares. Before they’d gone to get more supplies with the crew, he’d crowded her against another wall and kissed her deeply, bruisingly, until they were both breathless and heavy lidded (he had to hide his face against her shoulder to compose himself before they could move on).

Things go haywire and he has to clamp down on his excitement, tries his best to hold it in because Clara’s giving him that look which means it’s not appropriate, so he concentrates and thinks and allows himself to relish the making of a plan to finally _catch a ghost_. He catches himself humming _Ghostbusters_ when he sees Clara hiding a smile behind her hand, and stops short, images of a similar circumstances flashing in his mind from a life long since over. He throws himself into the planning but he can’t help it, he can’t help the thrill and adrenaline that tear through him. He knows Clara must be feeling it too, the exhilaration, the buzz kicking in, because when they’re handed ear pieces her eyes light up with something entirely not to do with current situation. She looks at him as she hands him the ear piece, smirk firmly on her lips, eyes dark with desire. He shivers and feels a pull in his gut. She whispers the word _later_ in his ear then casually walks away, and he catches himself before he falls, steadies himself on the table.

So maybe it was the thrill of standing in a room with actual ghosts, maybe it was the adrenaline they’d both felt running for their lives hand in hand, maybe it was pent up frustration between the two of them, crackling on air every time they were near each other, maybe it was the fact they just happened to be wearing earpieces, but mostly he blames it on her. That smile, those words, _that look_. All the looks. It’s an amalgamation of many things, but he pins it down to that one point, right at the very beginning when she’d danced around him with her smiles and her challenges and her eyes. He hadn’t stood a chance.

Which was how, through all the teases and the stolen moments and the running and the Real Deal Actual Ghosts, they both came to be panting heavily over earpieces in an underwater complex painfully aroused and no where near each other to do anything about it. To put it crudely, phone sex. Sort of.

“Are you alright?” The Doctor heard Clara’s voice in his ear almost as soon as he’d left the faraday cage. His hearts were pounding, his blood felt like it was on fire, every nerve, every atom of his being hyper aware of everything surrounding him. Hyper aware of his skin tingling, hyper aware of the excitement that only came from encounters like this, hyper aware of Clara’s quiet breathing so intimately in his ear. “Fine, I’m fine.”  
She snorted and he smiled. “Liar. You’re loving this.”  
 “Speak for yourself.”  
“What can I say? You know how to please a girl.” He could _feel_ the smile in her voice.  
“Is that so?” He smirks as he walks down the corridor. Slows his steps a little.   
“Well if that snog in the corridor was anything to go by, yeah, I think so.” He’s sure even she wouldn’t announce that as nonchalantly as she did in front of the crew, but just in case, he fiddles with the earpiece so that there’s only one line shared between them. “Still there?” She asks, faint embarrassment tinging her voice.  
“Just fixing the earpiece.”  
 “Fixing it?”  
 “So we don’t get interrupted by any idiots.” He pauses, half realising a fraction too late it might sound presumptuous, like he just assumes they’re going to—  
“Interrupted? What would they be interrupting exactly, Doctor?” He doesn’t know how she does it, but he swears he can _hear_ her smirking and lifting her eyebrow at him. He almost pulls off the earpiece to fiddle with it again, but settles instead for scanning for any suspicious tech in the area with his glasses (there isn’t any). He frowns and walks on, almost forgetting that Clara’s still talking to him.  
“Nothing, nothing.”  
“Shame.”  
 “What is?”   
“I was hoping you were going to say phone sex.“ He almost chokes on how blasé she sounds.  
“ _Clara_ ,” he whines sounding like a schoolboy but he suddenly feels like one, back in the academy, in the library after hours sucking in shaking breaths as trembling hands slip lower.  
“Don’t worry I’m in a different room, no one can hear,” she hesitates, and he can hear her shifting, “Sorry, I just assumed—“  
 “Clara,” he cuts her off, leans against a wall, “this is a bad idea. We’re chasing ghosts.”  
 “We’ve _captured_ ghosts,” she emphasises, pausing again, and he can see her biting her lip before she speaks, “bad idea… but not one you’re opposed to?”  
 His turn to pause. He squares his shoulders, “Not entirely.”  
“Then what better time? After you’ve just been stood in a room of _actual ghosts_.” She drops her voice making the last two words sound unfeasibly sexy. Which is just ridiculous, really. But he shivers all the same, because she knows him, so very well. “Pity we can’t take up where we left off.”  
“Downsides of intercoms. Tell me where you are.”  
“That’s no fun.”   
“Clara,” he starts but pauses because though he’s sure she tried to hide it, he heard her intake of breath, heard her barely audible inhalation as it so beautifully graced his ear. He smiles as he thinks _upside of intercoms_ , and repeats her name, slowly, sensually, rolling the r deeply, “ _Clara_.”  
She whines quietly, beautifully, and it licks across his skin, pooling at the base of his spine. He suddenly wants to entice all noises he can from her, tempt them from her lips, eat them as they fall into the air.  
“Tell me what you want, Clara.”  
“To be back in that sodding corridor. Why did we stop again?”  
“Ghosts.” She hums in response and he flexes his fingers. He’s torn between desperately uncomfortable and, well. Uncomfortable but for different reasons. “I want to touch you, Clara.” He winces but she seems to like it, is sure she’s smiling again, so he ignores the embarrassment eating away in the back of his mind and continues. “It’s not enough, it’s never enough. I want to touch your hands and kiss your palms, your knuckles. Your wrists. I want to kiss your shoulders, your back, your stomach. Kiss your neck, bite and suck,” she curses quietly in his ear and suddenly he can’t stop, “I want to kiss your collarbones as I stroke your waist, maddeningly light, I want nibble your ear and whisper your name. _Clara_. I want to kiss you until your lips are bruised and you can’t breath. I love your lips, I love the way you smile,” the words come out of their own accord and he was to steady himself against the onslaught of _need want Clara Clara love please Clara_. “I want you out of those stupid heels, I want you to keep them on, I need you. I’ve always needed you, Clara, my Clara.”  
“Do you have, any idea,” she sounds breathy, flustered and he wants to bite her skin, her lips, wants to consume the sounds, devour her, “how many layers I’m wearing.”  
“ _Acutely_. I want to see your back arch and your hands clutching at bedsheets, I want to hear your breath stutter, I want to hear you keen and whimper. Clara—“ _I love you I love you_. He stops himself before the words can tumble out. He can hear Clara breathing heavily, feel his own hearts hammering, feel the arousal fusing in his nerves, the wild urgency, the desperate _need_ to touch her. He growls without meaning, sinks to the floor and breaths deeply. She mutters a curse in his ear.

After a while, when he feels more composed, but still frustratingly hard, Clara speaks.  
“You’re right. This is was a terrible idea.”  
He laughs because he can’t help it, because it’s fucking ridiculous, and nods before he realises she can’t see him. He wonders vaguely in the back of his mind what he looks like, an old man painfully aroused merely at the _discussion_ of kissing someone, kissing Clara (wonders more vividly what _she_ looks like). He swallows and clears his throat.  
“We should probably sort this ghost thing out.”  
She splutters, mutters something (“ _Your voice_ ”) and lets out a long breath. “Probably.” There’s a minute of quiet, before her voice tickles his ear, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this turned on without having someone even touch me. Frankly it’s a little embarrassing.”  
“More than a little,” he mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. At least she had the excuse of being _young_.  
There's a pause, and then she says, “We’re definitely keeping these.”


	4. Before the Flood: Who forgets a thing like that?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara doesn't forget how to drink liquids but she does forget a few things; like how to walk down stairs, which frankly, is just ridiculous. The Doctor, ever her knight in magician's coat, helps her remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where this came from but I absolutely have forgotten how to walk down stairs before and just kind of stood and balked for a few seconds before my brain kicked in. So I thought it would be amusing, and then I had this idea of him helping her but being REALLY flirty and just had to write it. It's really silly, which is GOOD because I've already written far too much angst. Also if there are any Green Wing fans out there one bit may seem a touch familiar... 
> 
> I had this ready to publish yesterday and then my internet died and I couldn't get it back (I'm very remote) so I'm very apologetic please forgive me.
> 
> As ever, I own nothing, the characters belong to the BBC. Also I have no beta so expect mistakes and typos.

They say their goodbyes, leave their well wishes, quietly smiling at Cass and Lunn. Clara catches the Doctor’s eye and they share a tender look across the space between them. Her heart stutters and she drops her gaze. She thinks of Bennett, of the way he’s feeling, of the way _she_ felt. It’s brought some memories thrashing back to the surface, ironically. It’s almost staggering, the wave of guilt she feels. She manages to get a hold on it before they get back to the TARDIS, manages to shove it into a box and haphazardly tape a lid around it, burying it back into the recesses of her mind. _Another day_ , she thinks.

It’s as she’s reflecting on this that she misses the irony of it all. Recalling certain memories and realising she’s forgotten other things. Really basic, simple things. Like how to walk down stairs. For example.

It stops her short, and she freezes, clutching the handrail of the TARDIS as she looks down in horror. It’s just not there. The knowledge of it, the how-to has quite literally vanished. All information under _Using Stairs_ has gone. She tries to move a foot forward but it just sort of, sits in mid air above the top step, and beyond that, she doesn’t know what else to do. She can feel the cold tendrils of panic creeping around her limbs. How can she forget something so basic?

The Doctor is talking, erratic and half sounding like a child again which is why it takes him a while before he appears to notice her. “What’s wrong?”  
“I’ve forgotten,” she says mutely. She keeps trying to will her foot to do something, anything, but it just keeps _sitting_ there and christ now she’s really beginning to panic.  
“Oh,” he looks mildly confused but then goes off on another tangent and if she had something in her hand to throw at him she would. She tears her eyes away from the stairs to glare at him.  
“ _Doctor_.” He looks up at her expectantly and really, as soon she can get down the steps she’s going to punch him. “I can’t remember.”  
He frowns and walks around to stand in front of her, albeit several steps below. He lifts an eyebrow, in his standard, _I don’t know what you’re talking about is this a human thing please explain_. She sucks in a breath, trying to steady the racing of her heart. She can’t remember, how can she not remember how to _walk down some fucking stairs_?  
“I mean, I can’t remember how to walk down the stairs. I don’t know how, it’s just, there’s this bit in my head where it should be and it’s not _there_ ,” it all comes out in a rush and she grips the handrail tighter ( _keep it together, Clara_ ). She watches the realisation appear on his face, almost hears the _click!_ of the lightbulb switch on behind his eyes.  
“Strange. It’s usually the liquids thing,” she opens her mouth but he hurriedly continues before she can shout at him, “No matter, we’ll sort this. It’s fine,” he smiles at her, one of her favourite smiles, soft edged and tender, saved only for her. She feels her panic abate a little. “Put your leg out.”  
She does so as he moves up the steps so he’s slightly to the side of her, crouched by her leg. He touches her, one hand on her calf, one above her knee. Her heart jumps. “Excellent. Bend your leg, just like that, that’s right,” he lightly pushes, and for a second she thinks she feels his thumb stroking her leg, but then she feels the gap in her brain where _How to Walk Down Stairs 101_ used to be so ignores it. He stands, shifting his hands as he does so, one resting under her knee, the other skimming her body until it reaches her lower back. There’s a voice in the back of her mind, jumping up and down and pointing this out, shouting with an excessive amount of exclamation marks about how he’s touching her, but honestly, _she can’t remember how the fuck to walk down stairs_ so it gets pushed into the background.  
“Now, put your weight forward onto your left leg.”  
“I can’t,” she whispers, hand clutching at nothing while the other maintains a painfully tight grip on the handrail. Mentally she apologies to the TARDIS, who in return makes some noise that sounds half amused, half exasperated.  
His hand slides out from under her leg to grip her own, speaking softly as he does so, “It’s okay, Clara. You can, look.”  
He puts his own left leg on the step, like it was _nothing_ and she bites back on a whimper, nodding jaggedly. She decides to give herself 5 seconds, 5 seconds before she leans. _One_. The Doctor moves closer, wrapping his arm around her waist, leaving them inches apart. _Two_ , he kisses her shoulder. _Three_ , murmurs “I’ve got you”. _Four_ , gives her hand a squeeze. _Five_.  
She leans, putting all her weight into her left leg, and for a fraction of a second she feels like she’s falling, her whole body is plummeting into nothing, but then his grip on her hand and waist come to the forefront of her mind and she feels safe. Her foot lands heavy, with an awkward clunk as it hits the metal.  
“See? Easy. Do the same with your other leg.”  
She’s not sure if it’s because she’s so happily enveloped in his arms, or if it’s genuinely because she has no idea what to do next, but she doesn’t move, just sucks in a shaking breath, and nods.  
She stands there for a full minute before she feels his hand give her waist a squeeze and he moves back around to stand in front of her. He lets go of her hand but immediately grabs it again with his other. He walks down the step backwards, _backwards_ , and smiles.  
“Show off.” She mutters, and his smile grows, reaching his eyes, his thumb stroking on the back of her hand.  
“Clara,” he says and she barely manages to conceal a shiver. She doesn’t the second time, “Clara, it’s fine. You’re okay.” He bends, his left hand moving down the line of her thigh, slowly, languidly, before it settles under her knee, and lightly pulls. _Fuck_.  
He coaxes her leg onto the step, absurdly dropping a kiss onto her knee. Slowly, he stands up, fingers trailing up her leg, her side, along her arm until he reaches her other hand. He prises it loose from the hand rail and holds it. “Now try it yourself.”  
She balks and nearly falls. “ _Seriously?_ ”  
 “Come on,” he says, elongating the words unnecessarily in what she knows is him just goading her. _Damn him._

She huffs out a deep breath, before repeating the movements herself. She thinks of how his hands gently bent her leg, pulled it forward ever so slightly. She reminds herself that he has a tight hold on her, and if she were to fall, he’d catch her. She runs through everything in the past 3 minutes, every movement, every action, and somehow manages, though very clumsily and haphazardly to make it down the stairs, and onto mercifully flat ground. The TARDIS makes a noise of approval. She feels her heartbeat start to calm and a wave of relief wash over her.  
  
“That’s quite possibly, one of the most ridiculous things to have ever happened.” She drops his hands and places one over her heart in attempt to quash the rapid beating. She swears quietly, then looks up to meet the Doctor’s gaze. He’s looking at her with an expression she doesn’t recognise. One she’s in the back of her mind quietly longed for but hasn’t done anything about because he’s “not a hugger” and still shies away from physical contact (though he's getting better). He smirks at her, leaning in, and she smacks his arm.  
 “Ow! What was that for?” He steps back, rubbing the spot.   
“ _That_ was all your bloody fault. How could you make me forget how to walk down stairs?”   
“I didn’t purposefully make you forget how to walk down stairs, Clara, don’t be ridiculous!”  
She rolls her eyes and walks around the console, still wary of the treachery of her legs, needing a minute to think to herself, glancing suspiciously at the steps themselves. She makes a full circuit and comes to stand beside him, both leaning back against the console. She nudges him with her shoulder.  
“Thanks.”  
He shrugs. They stand side by side, both falling into silence as they think back on the day. Clara still recalls the way he’d looked at her, through the rising water, hand on the glass as if he could reach out to touch her. Still remembers the heart stopping dread she’d felt when she saw him as a ghost. The cold terror and unnameable disquiet when she thought he’d died, the blistering anger and refusal. When he’d jumped out of the suspended animation chamber and was there again.  
“I thought…” he said quietly, and she looks up. She waits. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to save you.”  
Her heart does a strange thing, goes heavy and light at the same time. She slips around in front of him, wrapping her arms around his waist, pushing up on her tip toes just so she can hold more of him. His arms fold around her easily, almost without thinking. She wonders when they got this close, or if she’s just never noticed.

“But you did. I’m here and I’m safe,” she strokes his back, and feels his grip tighten on her. Her mutters her name and buries his face against her neck. She decides to take a risk and thread her hand through his hair, carding and soothing the silver curls. He makes a small noise and relaxes, albeit only slightly. She tries to remember the last hug their shared. She thinks it was in medieval England, hundreds of years ago. It feels like eons have past since.

Eventually he moves back, and she drops her arms, aware of the regime they have when it comes to hugs. His linger, before moving so his hands cup her face. He has a look in his eyes, and the depth of it scares her, but all she has time to think is _this is new_ before he’s leaning down to press his lips against hers. Her heart comes to a juddering halt as if it’s had enough of this emotional rollercoaster of a day. Her mind fizzes and her lips tingle, everything slowing down to the warmth of him, his tenderness, to nothing at all. Then the enormity of it hits her like a wave and it all seems to catch up with her in a second; her blood roars in her ears, her skin flushes with heat, her heart suddenly pounding into life again. She doesn’t have time to even contemplate kissing him back because she’s suddenly stepped back without realising and is staring at him, wide eyed and baffled. She see’s a flash of hurt across his features, but it disappears almost before she’s registered it.

“I—“ she stops, touching her fingers to her lips before dropping them, her mind racing with _what are you doing kiss him back you’ve wanted this for so long kiss him_ , and _how the fuck did I forgot to walk down the stairs_.  
“Clara?” His vocal register hits a point in her spine and pools there. _Christ_. “I thought…” he trails off uncertain, the look on his face sending an icy pain through her chest. She tentatively feels around in her head. Something’s off about this. It feels like trying to remember the name of someone, feeling it dancing around on the tip of your tongue but still unable to grasp it.  
“Are we…?”  
The TARDIS groans almost in sync with the Doctor, who covers his face with his hands. “You don’t remember.” He says flatly, when he’s dropped his arms limply to his sides.  
 “Remember what?” If she didn’t know any better, she’d think the TARDIS just sighed. He stares at her, emotions running across his face and she wants to reach out and put on the handbrake, pause, make him stop make him _talk_. “Remember what, Doctor? Tell me.” She slips her hand into his and squeezes. He runs his free hand through his hair and looks anywhere but her.  
“We kissed. Do kiss. Quite a lot, frankly.”   
“When?”  
He shrugs, making a vague gesture with his hand. “Frequently.”  
“Recently?”  
He shrugs again, and she swears silently. _Bollocks_. “Where?” She watches him carefully. He blushes faintly. Is he embarrassed?  
“Mostly on the lips but—“  
 “I meant, where as in where were we not… where…” she trails off, feeling heat creep into her face.  
“Oh. Well, er, anywhere we could find really.”   
“While we were on adventures?”  
 “ _Especially_ then.” He catches her eye for half a second as he emphasises the word. She squeezes her eyes shut. _Fucking typical_.  
“And I’ve apparently forgotten it all?”   
“Clearly.”  
She huffs a sigh. “Right. Well.” She doesn’t seem to be able to say anything else, other than a torrent of swearwords streaming off in her head. She takes a moment to compose herself, vaguely aware of his hand clutching hers, ever so lightly stroking her fingers with his own. “Best one?”   
“What?”  
 “What was the best one?”  
“Ah,” he frowns and she inwardly high-fives herself for apparently making it such a hard decision, “Probably the most recent. Not, not that one but,” he gestures between them, and she nods understanding ( _not the one where just shared where you entirely forgot about us kissing altogether_ ), “the one before that. In the base. Before the water and the ghost me.”  
 She purses her lips, tries to look like she’s only asking this for the scientific knowledge it would provide, “Tell me about it.”  
 He pauses, eyes flickering back to her face, between her lips and her eyes, searching. “It was after we spoke in the TARDIS about you not going native.”  
 “I remember that,” she nods, then adds hastily when his eyes light up, “the conversation.”  
He inclines his head, disappointed, “I felt uncomfortable. I’d tried to show you that I care,” she catches him suppress a squirm and squeezes his hand in reward, “and then didn’t know what to do, so I kissed you.” He shrugs and she raises her eyebrows.  
 “That’s it? You kissed me?”  
“Not exactly.”  
“Normally you’re a stickler for details, Doctor. Don’t let me hold you back.” She raises her eyebrow in as suggestive manner as she can muster, reminding herself this isn’t as remotely new as it feels. He lets go of her hand and shifts away from her. She thinks she’s pushed too far, but then she’s rewarded with him spinning her round, and crowding her against the console.   
“We’d left the TARDIS, as I said after our talk. I don’t have a wall to hand so it can’t be an accurate reproduction I’m afraid.”  
 “I’ve got a good imagination, I’m sure I’ll cope,” Clara’s impressed at her ability to sound so nonchalant. She gives herself another mental high-five.  
“I pushed you against the wall, you had your hands here,” he carefully lifted her hands and placed them around his waist, “I put one of my hands here,” he dropped one to her side, by her hip against the console, “the other here,” cupping her face, fingers dipping into her hair. _Jesus christ_ , “I pressed myself against you, like this,” he stepped closer, slipping one of his legs into between hers until he was pressed flush against her, “leant forward and…” his lips hovered, millimetres above her own, she could feel his breath ghosting her lips, feel the heat raging between, she shifted up ever so slightly to meet him— “and then I kissed you.” He let go of her and stood back. She felt a rush of cold air as she faltered and had to steady herself against the console. He smirked. _Bastard. Smug fucking bastard_.

“Really,” she mumbled, trying to reign in the arousal washing through her. _Game face on, Oswald, you've just got to get him back_. She was still calming her breathing, cursing every god and deity she’d known that would make her forget _that_ , when she felt the TARDIS push something into her hand. Surprised, and no small amount of suspicious, Clara looked at the object in her hand. An earpiece. She frowned and looked up at the Doctor, eyebrows furrowing deeper at the look on his face.  
“Are you _blushing_?”  
“No,” he said at the same time as she felt the TARDIS hum.  
“Someone thinks so,” she smirked, glad there was at least someone on her side. Or something. Someship. Whatever. “Why does this make you blush, Doctor?”  
 “I’m not—“  
“Is it to do with us?” The TARDIS hummed again. “Okay… so we used these? For what?” He spluttered, pulling on his coat and running his hand through his hair. “You’re a terrible liar.”   
“You’re cheating.” The TARDIS made a noise and he scowled, “Stop helping her.”  
“It’s like playing 20 Questions but better. I’m guessing then, that if you’re blushing, you’re embarrassed about it.” The TARDIS’s lights changed colour for a second and Clara laughed. “This is great. You’re embarrassed and _she_ thinks you deserve it. Is this because of just now, by the console?” She asked, ignoring him muttering under his breath darkly. The TARDIS positively vibrated and Clara smiled. “She’s helping me get my own back. Which _means_ , Doctor,” she walked up to him and prodded him in the chest, “that she thinks you had an unfair advantage just now, and that she wants to level the playing field. It also probably means that we used the headpieces for something, _untoward_.” She dropped her voice and smirked, watching him fall silent and complacent before her. “Did we use these for sex?”  
“No!” Then, “Yes— not exactly!” When the TARDIS clucked at him. He sighed. “We didn’t… it wasn’t, it was just… _implied_.”  
Clara frowned. “So, we did use them with the idea of phone sex in mind, just didn’t… do anything other than talk about it?”  
 “Sort of.” He mumbled, looking at the floor.  
“We did more than talk about it?” He mumbled again and she rolled her eyes, “We did have phone sex just not quite? Is that it?” He shrugged and Clara paused, narrowing her eyes, “We did have phone sex but just verbally without there being any touching, of each other or of ourselves?”  
“ _Clara_.”  
“What?”  
 “Can you _please_ stop saying it?”  
She grinned. “I’m right through aren’t I?”  
 “Yes, yes you’re right.”  
He looked so embarrassed and so _uncomfortable_ that she took pity on him. “Well, I’m sorry I missed it. All of it, actually. The kissing and the— other stuff.”  
“Me too.” He said quietly, looking at her with his beautiful old eyes. She felt her resolve soften.  
“What was the first one like?”   
“First kiss?” She nodded and he shrugged, a look of sadness growing on his features, “You wouldn’t have liked it. It was before Skaro.”  
“When you said goodbye?” He nodded. She wanted to kick herself. _Idiot_. “Guess there’s only one thing for it then.”   
“What’s that?” He asked vaguely, still lost in the memories behind his eyes.  
“You’ll have to remind me. Although from the sounds of it, there have been quite a lot, so… maybe we could have a day off from the adventures. Have a day of remembering instead.” Slowly he smiled, and she could feel the warmth of his gaze filling her head to toe. “If you want.”  
“Sounds like an excellent plan, Clara. Better start immediately. Just in case.”  
“In case of what?”  
 “Distractions,” he murmured as he leant down and kissed her.


	5. The Girl Who Died: Were you born in a barn?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara’s back from the Mire’s ship, blaming herself, because she could have prevented it, could have saved lives, but all the Doctor seems to care about is her safety. Brief mention of self destruction. Clara’s POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so many ideas after this episode, so many ficlets started running off in my brain but for SOME REASON I picked the one that absolutely did not want to be written. It kept trying to be angsty and painful no matter what I did, insisted on making my heart ache despite my best efforts. What a rotter. Anyway, I have no beta so expect mistakes, and I’ve never written smut before so this and the next chapter are the closest I’ve ever come to (ha) so please god forgive me if it’s awful. I don’t know where the title came from but it made me giggle.
> 
> I do not owe these characters, they belong to the BBC.

Suddenly she's back, hands in the dirt knees on the ground. She isn’t sure if it’s from the abrupt teleportation, or from the fact she almost _almost_ prevented a war but didn’t. It feels like she’s had the earth kicked out from under her. Her stomach heaves and she takes a second to breath in sharply through her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. She almost had it, she almost convinced them to leave. She was _so close_.

She gets up slowly, aware of the Doctor repeating her name and running towards her. She’d be ecstatic if an unhinged alien with innumerable teeth and a trigger happy disposition hadn’t just declared war on a village she’s currently standing in. He runs and then stops, beaming and gives her a thumbs up of all things. She frowns and he shrugs as if in reply, then adding, “I’m not a hugger” before he’s running the last few steps and sweeping her up in a hug, spinning her round. She smiles for half a second, forgetting the situation, allowing herself to be lost in his arms. To feel safe. She wraps her own tightly around him, squeezing, while he spins and spins and spins murmuring her name. He finally releases her and pulls out a diary speaking hurriedly, consistently over the top of her despite the look of urgency she’s trying to get across.  
“I looked in my two thousand year diary, they’re called the Mire, they’re one of the deadliest—“  
“Listen—“ but he’s talking again, ignoring her, ploughing on, confidence, excitement and something else tinging his voice. _Shut up_ , she thinks, _this is important shut up!_  
“—races in the _entire_ galaxy.“  
 “Okay—“  
“But they’re practical! They get what they want and then they go, you persuaded them to go didn’t you,” he says finally looking up, pride swelling in his eyes, “I knew that you would!”   
“The deadliest warrior race in the galaxy?” She pulls the book out of his hands and rereads the statement. She poses it as a question despite the knowledge in the back of her mind that there’s no possible way he could be mistaken. Because it’s never just something simple, it’s never something kind or nonviolent, never just a strangely aggressive way of selling their knitted socks (which admittedly happened _once_ but it was _weird_ ).  
“One of them yes, why?” As though it’s nothing, as though he has such unwavering faith in her.  
“Because I think this village just declared war on them.” She looks up at him as she says it, fear worming its way back into her skull. She feels terrified and guilty and a blistering ache like she’s disappointed him somehow. He tilts his head slightly, confused, frowning, eyebrows furrowing deeply as what she says sinks in.  
“War?” Someone over his shoulder asks. The murmurs start, and she can hear the panic, the fear in their voices. The noise swells, swaying around her. She nearly prevented this. She could have stopped it. All these people.

Someone calls for a town meeting, and people drift, half dazed towards the biggest barn. She starts to follow, aiming to help in anyway she can ( _you could have stopped this_ ), but before she gets five steps away, he calls her back.  
“Clara? Can I have a word?”  
She turns and nods, a lump lodging in her throat. Despite the niggling that this is her doing, this war, she also knows she tried her best. She did pretty well, too, to a point. She was calm, she was nonchalant, she even for a bit managed to sound bored. So she knows he can’t possibly be actually upset with her, knows he won’t actually blame her… yet it burns in the back of her throat, embers steadily growing.

No one seems to notice their departure, and she follows him round the corner to another barn, smaller. He peers inside, then gestures for her to follow. As soon as her foot is over the threshold she speaks, “I’m sorry, I tried to—“  
“What?”  
She sighs, huffing as she begins to pull her spacesuit off, “It was fine, it was going okay, I was talking and he was _listening_ he was actually listening but then… I didn’t know Ashilda was going to do that, one second she was silent then from nowhere—“ she wobbles and he grabs her arm, steadying her. She daren’t look at his face, not yet. “I couldn’t make him listen after that, I couldn’t get him to fucking _listen_ ,” she shoves the spacesuit off and steps out of it, rubbing her face with her hands before dropping them to her hips, “He crushed the others and extracted their testosterone and drank it which frankly, is _disgusting_ , but it’s probably important and you’re still not fucking saying anything.”  
She finally looks up at him, barely has time to blink before he strides towards her and wraps her up in his arms. She can hardly breath he’s holding her so tightly. “Doctor what—“  
“You’re safe.”  
She barely refrains from rolling her eyes. It seems to be a recurring discussion between them lately: her nearly dying, his overreaction. Whatever follows. “I was okay, you know. I knew what I was doing. Mostly.” She isn’t sure if it’s a lie, or a half truth. Or a confusing vague mixture of the two.  
“ _Clara_.” He lets go and frowns the frown he saves for special occasions. The frown he keeps using more and more.  
“What?”  
 “Don’t do that again.”   
“Do what again? Find a way to get out of my own handcuffs because someone was too busy showing off their yoyo tricks? Which by the way, are completely rubbish.”  
He looks offended. Tired. Something else she can’t place. “Don’t change the topic. You keep doing this, Clara!”  
 “Doing what?”  
“This!” He waves his hands about her, which then gravitate unwittingly toward her face and he leans down to kiss her. He presses a desperate kiss to her lips, then drops them like raindrops about her face as he murmurs to her, “You keep putting yourself in danger. You keep being brave.”  
She frowns, clutching his coat feeling utterly baffled. “I’m not putting myself in danger, I was trying to get myself _out_ of danger.”  
 “By _putting_ yourself in danger,” he grumbles as he kisses her forehead, her cheekbones, her chin.  
It takes her a minute but it clicks, eventually, and she feels a weariness settle in her bones. She was right, he is upset with her. “Are you angry with me?”  
“Angry? No,” his thumb skims her cheekbone, “Cross yes.”  
She pushes at his chest and he steps back. “You’re cross with me because I got teleported onto the Mire’s ship?”  
“Yes—no,” he spins away from her, pacing about the floor. She goes to stand against the wall, gather her strength. He’s holding something back. She isn’t sure if she wants to push further to find out what it is, what’s making him this erratic, this inconsistent. Her heart swells in her chest, and she swallows, turning back to him.  
“I _tried_. He was listening to me but—“  
 “What?”  
“He was going to leave, he—“  
 “What’s that got to do with anything?” He snaps, pausing in his path.  
“One of the most deadliest warrior races in the galaxy just declared war on a tiny village we’re currently stuck in,” she ticks it off with her fingers as she goes, a disconcerting feeling growing in her, “I almost stopped it from happening, but _didn’t_ ,” another finger, another foundation of guilt, “You thought I’d made them go, and now you know I haven’t you’re cross.”   
He stared at her, unmoving, unchanging. Then, “You think I’m cross with you because you didn’t make them leave?”   
She resists the urge to fidget. “Yes.”  
His face softens and hardens all at once. “That’s completely ridiculous.”  
 “Is it?”  
“ _Yes_.” He strides towards her, and for a fraction of a second she remembers a storm she saw once at sea. She’d been visiting the beach with her dad, not long after her mum died, and it seemed apt, in its own way. Time didn’t mourn for her mother as she did, time ignored her, passed her by and kept going. But then there was this storm, a monumental tempest thrashing at the injustice along with her. She remembers the noise, the thunder that echoed in her bone marrow, the waves that shattered against the rock like glass. She remembers the colours, the rich inky black that mushroomed in the clouds. Charred wood, her dad’s coffee, black treacle. Dark chocolate. Velvet. All those blinding darks, then suddenly a dizzyingly glacial blue, silver grey and frosted violet, which in a flash disappeared. Just like her mother. In that moment, that second, he’s just like that storm. Blazing, comforting, beautiful.  
“I’m cross with you, Clara Oswald, because I care about you,” he stands as close as he possibly can without actually touching her, voice low and painfully earnest, “You keep throwing yourself into danger, into all of this. If something happened—“ he cuts himself off, squeezes his eyes shut. Flexes his jaw. “Clara.” He opens his eyes, tilts his head to the side slightly, eyes fixed on her mouth. The jagged feeling inside her chest pulses, and she has to clamp her teeth shut to prevent it from slipping past her lips.

“My, Clara,” he breaths, hand reaching up to cup her face. He seems to like that, she’s noticed. In the (many) times they are distracted with one another, his hands always seem to gravitate towards her in some fashion. To her face, to her hands, to her knees. He has a strange fascination with the joints of her body, touches her wrists and her elbows, her hip like he’s touching a priceless artefact of some distant past he can no longer reach.  
“I’ll always be right here with you, Doctor.”

He looks up into her eyes and she feels something inside her fracture; he looks so sad in that moment she can’t bear it. _I’m not lost, I’m still here_. They lean into the kiss together, both eager to hide the feelings fluttering around them. He kisses her softly, with such an aching tenderness that suddenly Clara feels a flash of anger. Anger at his caring, anger at his sorrow, anger that she recognises from when they were deep underwater, when he so quickly accepted that he was going to die and leave her. She’s infuriated by him, by his kissing her to hide the sadness on his face. His silent acknowledgment of their inevitable separation. It leaves her incandescent and she’d shout if his lips weren’t pressed so gently against hers so she bites his lip and deepens the kiss instead.

He makes a noise of surprise, the sound muffled and wrapped up in the air between them. Initially he seems reluctant, like he’s clinging to the memory of her already gone, which only raises her temper ( _I’m right here, right now right in front of you_ ). She shoves her hands into his hair, digging her nails into his scalp and _yanks_. He stutters, groaning quietly while his hands find her waist and he bodily pushes her back against the wall. Finally he’s kissing her back, finally she can run her tongue along his lip and against the backs of his teeth, she can suck his tongue filthily because he’s remembering that he’s angry too, and this is better this is _good_.

He bites her lip in return, pulls her shirt out from her jeans and slides his hand underneath, up her back, raising goosebumps as his fingers graze her skin. She whimpers, quietly, but not quietly enough. He hears it, pushes into it, practically licks it out of her mouth. She yanks on his hair again, angling his head so she can better suck at his bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth and relishes in the moan she gets in return. He slides a leg between hers, closing what little space there is left, and _growls_.

“I’m still cross with you.” He kisses her neck as he says it, biting lightly here and there, never staying in one place long enough. She drops her hands to his shoulders, his back, clutching at his coat. He nuzzles her earlobe, drops a featherlight kiss there, and moves back to drop another on her lips. His eyes are slightly hazy, hair ragged and unruly, a slight flush under his skin. He looks devastatingly attractive.

“Then show me,” she challenges, lifting her chin and quirking a brow. His face darkens, and any gentleness there is clouded by the heat in his eyes. She thinks she’s pushed too far, that he’s going to kiss her softly, sadly, and walk away, but he surprises her by moving his hands to unbutton her jeans and dip one inside.  
“Show you?” He asks, raising a brow of his own, as his fingers masterfully find her clit and apply the barest glimmers of pressure. “Show you what exactly, Clara?” He sounds unlike she’s ever heard him. His voice crackles and she can feel the deep velvety richness of it sink into her pores and pool at the base of her spine. She can feel her blood fizzing under her skin, feel every point he’s pressed against her. “Show you how angry I am that you keep hurtling yourself at anything dangerous?” He moves his index finger across her clit, slowly, _languidly_ , and she bites on her lip to stop herself from moaning, “How angry I am that you have such blatant disregard for your own life?” He’s tormenting her, rolling his fingers deliberately, edging between enough pressure and nothing at all, “Despite knowing that I care for you?” He removes his hand but only so he can slide the jeans knowingly over her arse, grazing the skin, then leaving them awkwardly half way down her thighs.

“Show you,” he leans down, mouth hovering above her own, and slides a finger inside her, “how hard it is to see you set on damaging yourself in someway?” She wants to say, _that’s not true I wouldn’t do that to you it’s not like that_ , but she can’t make the words emerge, she can’t pull them out because part of her thinks it’s true. After Danny, after Christmas, she’s felt slightly unhinged, not quite balanced, but she hasn’t mentioned it, hasn’t said anything and yet he _knows_. She’s suddenly not sure what this is, why he’s making her feel two such conflicting things at once. Why he’s talking now like he never does while simultaneously fingering her in a fucking viking’s barn. His other hand grips her hip to still her, though she hadn’t even realised she’d been arching into him. He removes and replaces his finger once, twice, three times. The fourth time her breath stutters, the fifth she groans loudly, hands fisting his coat. A second finger joins the first, and she keens, pushing against his hand, eyes fluttering shut.

“Clara.” The sound of it rolls across her skin, sparks jumping down her spine, crackling in her gut. She opens her eyes to be greeted with his, dark and heavy lidded, pupils blown wide but still there’s something else in there, a sadness, a pain. “Show you how much it hurts me that you’re trying to leave in a way I can’t get you back.” He kisses her bruisingly, filthily, sucking on her lips, her tongue, as his fingers draw in out, in out, and when his thumb reaches up to circle her clit she moans obscenely against his lips. She can feel the orgasm climbing on her, feel it building, her nerves on fire, a flush mounting as heat blazes across her skin.

“Doctor,” she gasps, blindingly confused and tortuously close to coming. Why is he saying this now, _right now_ , with his fingers inside her and lips on her skin. She wants to ask why, wants to hold him, reassure him, but then he murmurs her name and crooks his fingers in a _come hither_ gesture and she’s lost, orgasm rippling through her, curling her toes and arching her back while her knees give out from under her.

He holds her through it, keeping her from falling, kissing her neck and her jaw, tenderly over the areas he’d previously visited more harshly with his teeth. Hand removed and subtly wiped with a handkerchief procured from his pocket, he waits patiently until her breathing has calmed, until she can stand by herself, before stepping back. He can’t seem to resist touching a hand to her face to tell her, “You’re beautiful” and it would all be very romantic if her jeans weren’t still around her thighs, and he hadn’t just confessed his fears of her apparent self-destruction while bringing her off in a barn about to be obliterated by a toothy nutter with self esteem issues, _which she could have stopped_ and then suddenly she’s back to square one. He drops his hand and she pulls up her jeans, feeling extremely disorientated and weak kneed. She doesn’t get the post-orgasm bliss she usually so delightfully enjoys. All she gets its ten thousand thoughts crashing around in her brain, her heart doing strange jerks when certain thoughts become more prominent. He kisses her forehead, then turns around and leaves the barn without a word.

She slides to the ground, leans her head back against the wood and watches the space he just vacated. She sits silently, then tells it, “I’m sorry.”


	6. The Woman Who Lived: Gift Wrap Available

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara has a gift for the Doctor and he absolutely did not expect that. The Doctor’s POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to write something kind of ridiculous because honestly that last scene, that last shot of Clara smiling made me think of the shot of Billie and David on their last filming day together; that sad smile that causes me intense physical pain. I NEEDED SOMETHING DAFT. And I needed to get over my fear of writing something a bit smutty so here we are. I’m going to lie on the floor for a bit.
> 
> Again I own nothing, merely a deep anguish for the ever closer day that Jenna leaves.

“Did you miss me?”  
“Be more specific, who are you?”  
“Ha ha. I’ve got a present for you,” she says, dropping her bag and jacket as she does.  
“Why? Am I ill?”  
 “No.”  
 “Are you ill?”  
“No.”  
 “Are you never gonna travel with me again because I said a thing?” He pats himself on the back mentally. That was a good one. He’s getting better at using humour to disguise his ever-growing fear that she’s going to leave. He might use that one again.  
She sighs and rolls her eyes, “It’s not a _good_ present,” she says as she walks over, folding her arms.  
“Oh, that’s a relief.”   
“It’s a great present. Or, well, it could be,” she smirks at him, her face sparkling. He narrows his eyes at her.  
“What does that mean?”  
“That means, Doctor. Close your eyes and open them when I tell you.”  
His turn to roll his eyes. “Clara, I’m not _ten_ , I’m not going to be amazed when you drop a tiny umbrella in my hands.”   
“You could fool me. Besides, you were the last time.”  
“That,” he points his finger at her, “that was different. That was a tiny _blue_ umbrella.”   
“And that makes a difference how?”   
“Because it had tiny yellow ducks on,” he says like it’s obvious because well, _it is._ She laughs and shakes her head, does that strange thing where her eyes go all soft with a light behind them like sunlight on summer nights.  
“Close your eyes, you daft git. You’ll like it.”  
“Clara, you know I don’t like surprises,” but he obeys, closes his eyes and leans against the railing, holding one hand out palm up.  
“Yes you do,” she says and he nods because she’s right, of course she is. His palm lies empty in the open air.  
“Okay sometimes I do. Like the time when I thought we were going to be killed by a giant clone of Cilla Black, when in fact all she wanted us to do was sit on her intergalactic blind date show. Not being killed was a nice surprise, I liked that surprise, though in hindsight maybe it would have been preferable to _seventeen_ hours worth of the audience laughing at my eyebrows and Kevin leering at me.”   
“He wasn’t leering at you, he was smiling. He was shy of you. I think he really liked you actually,” her voice sounds slightly muffled but before he can even think of opening his eyes to find out why, she quite clearly says “ _No peeking_.”  
“I wasn’t going to—” (“Yes you were,”) “—besides, I didn’t like Kevin. Not like that. Plus we’re,” he uses his _still empty_ hand to point between them then flattens it again (he gets the sense she’s smiling at him), “Or that time when we were going to be blown up and instead got a cookery lesson on baking banana bread. That was a nice surprise. Still haven’t tried that recipe, actually.”   
“You’re not doing that without me, you’ll set fire to the kitchen. _Again_.”   
“That was _once_ , Clara.” The TARDIS makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort and he hurries on before she can somehow tell Clara about the baked alaska incident, “Why is my hand still empty? Have you got me something with no atomic mass or discernible shape?”  
“I don’t think it would quite fit in your hand. But here,” she drops something warm and soft, a little scratchy onto his palm, “open your eyes.”  
When he opens them, he’s sure he has a ten second delay before his body or mind registers what’s in front of him. Which is Clara. With no clothes on. Naked. _Correction_ , he thinks with a sharp tug in his gut, _naked apart from her heels_. His hearts judder, and she lifts an eyebrow at him, hands on her hips ( _skin so much skin_ ), shoulders back and head up. She looks so confident, so brazen and beautiful, he’s not entirely sure he can stay standing. He glances for a fraction of a second at what’s in his hand (her skirt) before tearing his gaze back to her. He isn’t sure where to look, doesn’t know if he can bring himself to hold back if he looks beyond her face.

He realises why the fabric he’s holding is warm as he says, “I don’t think it’s my colour” voice cracking and sounding embarrassingly like a schoolboy who just saw a girl for the first time. He gets a dizzying feeling of déjà vu, of them being underwater with a headset, ( _“I was hoping you were going to say phone sex”_ ) of not so long ago in a barn where he’d touched her and then slid to the ground after he’d left, trying to quell his aching heart and throbbing arousal. He needs to sit down.  
“Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you lose some layers and we’ll find out?” He detects a hint of apprehension in her voice, the barest layer of anxiety. He drops the skirt and walks forward to kiss her.

He loves kissing her. He loves the soft sighs, the small noises she makes. The way her hands always crawl up into his hair and _tug_. He loves it when she smiles when he kisses her, even more when she laughs ( _almost as much as when she moans_ ). He wants to eat the sighs from her lips, memorise the backs of her teeth, the shape of her tongue. He loves the way she unwittingly follows his mouth when he pulls back. The way her eyes glaze over, then trawl up to meet his own. He loves kissing her, but now he’s presented with the opportunity to kiss more than her mouth, her neck, her shoulders. He can kiss her breasts, the baby soft skin underneath them, kiss the inside of her elbow, her wrists. He can lavish her stomach and her hips. Bite and lick down her thighs, her knees. He almost trembles with the weight of so many possibilities.

He kisses her, and the words nearly fall out his mouth. _I love you_. Instead he smiles, fingers graze her collarbone, says “I’ve always liked surprises”, and delights in the laughter that follows. It tickles his left ear, sparkles under his skin. The universe glitters in her eyes. He picks up her hands, kisses the backs of them and pulls her into a hug. While she huffs a chuckle against his ear (“Not quite what I expected”), he tries very hard to not think of how utterly naked she is, not to think of how absurdly warm she feels, and definitely not to think about how she’s still wearing her heels and he’s not quite sure how she knew.

He pulls back and drops a kiss to her lips, pushes lightly so she’s leaning against the console. She smirks, but before she can say anything, he drops, hands circling her waist, feverishly touching the skin, and kisses her left breast. She makes a small “oh”, one hand fluttering to the back of his head. He drops kisses on the underside of her breast, licks a stripe along the soft skin beneath, shifts to flatten his tongue against her nipple. She huffs out a breath and he smiles against her skin, hearts hammering in his chest, part of him unsure whether this is a real thing that is really happening or whether he’s actually dying somewhere with a dream crab latched onto his face. He raises his right hand to knead her other breast as he whorls his tongue around her nipple, allowing his teeth to faintly scrape against the highly sensitised skin. Clara swears above him, her nails digging into his scalp. He pulls back and looks up at her, face flushed and pupils blown. She smiles a gentle smile, eyes lighting up at the corners. _Clara, my Clara_.

He kisses the space between her breasts, gives her other breast the same treatment, then drapes his fingers down her sides, thumbs digging into her hips and he has to pause, has to squeeze his eyes closed at the warmth and life he feels in the flesh beneath his hands. The gift she’s given him, unreserved, barefaced and raw. Just bestowed to him like it was nothing, like it was a stupid cocktail umbrella. He kisses her bellybutton and she laughs, hand stroking his hair. He bends fully so he can crook her knee, kiss it. He swallows, feels his muscles flex in his fingers. Calms his breathing.

“What’s with the shoes?” He sounds steadier than he feels. He studies the elegant line that makes her calf. The curve that glides down to her ankles. He thinks of Matisse, of the love of singular lines he has, and he understands it. Can see her as a drawing, as a masterpiece of one of the greats.  
“Ahhh, the TARDIS managed to pull a recording from the earpiece she gave me,” his head whips up and Clara has a crooked smile on her face, a tinge in her cheeks that’s nothing to do with the fingers idly caressing her skin, “I listened to it.”   
“You listened to it?” His voice lowering more than he’d intended. He watches her suck in a breath and nod. Pictures race through his mind.  
“A few times. Last night most recently.”  
 “Where were you?”  
 She hesitates, but then smirks slowly. “In bed.”   
He squeezes his eyes shut briefly, heat pooling in his gut ( _Clara in her bed, Clara breathy and gasping, Clara touching herself to the sound of his voice alone, Clara Clara Clara_ ). Then, “Did you touch yourself, Clara?”  
“Of course.”  
He’s sure one of his hearts has flat out just given up, is no longer working. Packed in and buggered off. His other is working overtime, erratically crashing in his chest. A shiver licks through his body, a tug rooting itself in his dick. His eyes never leave her face. They stare at each other for a time, how long he’s not sure, the air crackling and fizzing between them. Even the TARDIS seems to be holding her breath. A minute passes, a century, a nanosecond.

Eyes never leaving hers, he pulls her legs further apart, licks a stripe up her thigh. Leaves wet kisses on her skin, hands trailing after his mouth. He grips her hips as he dips his head to flatten his tongue against her clit and feels the shiver that ripples through her in the back of his teeth. A throaty moan escapes her and he feels his dick twitch in response. He sucks on her clit, rolling his tongue around it, biting enough to make her swear gutturally. He releases her, kissing her folds, sliding his tongue between, drinks her in, hands gripping her hips as they twitch against him. Her hands are in his hair, and she pulls sharply, eliciting a moan from the back of his throat.

He pushes one of his hands against her pubic bone to still her, uses the other to slide two fingers into her cunt while he lavishes her clit with his tongue. “ _Doctor_ —“ the words ride a husky sigh that falls from her lips, and he drives his fingers slowly, sucking on her clit, feels her shiver. She _whines_ and he barely manages to keep his own hips still, just from the _noise_ of her, the sound that claws its way down his spine, sets his nerve endings on fire. She’s making breathy noises, moans rhythmically dragging between them and then she says his name and he crooks his fingers and she comes. Her knees give out as she keens quietly. He removes his fingers and holds her hips, whorling his tongue gently as she comes down from it, drops small kisses along her inner thighs.

After a moment the grip on his hair loosens, and he lets go. He shrugs out of his coat, draping it on the floor, and tenderly pulls her onto it. She lies back and sighs, the occasional twitch rippling through her. He lays kisses on her stomach, lifts her hand so he can kiss her wrist. Ignores the agonising arousal blazing in him. He looks at her, naked warm and pink, lying against the vivid red lining of his coat. He wants to see her like this forever. Eat her whole and devour her.

She comes out of her reverie and smiles at him, immediately pulls him down for a slow wet kiss, and the thought of her tasting herself on his tongue makes his hips stutter. Her hand slides between them and grips him through his trousers, strokes and he breaks away from her mouth with a low groan. “You don’t have to—“ she presses up to stop him with her mouth, smiling and chuckling against his lips.  
“I wasn’t going to.”  
He feels a swell of disappointment, tries to ignore it, tries to flatten it and boot it out of existence. He doesn’t need this, really he doesn’t. He’s more than happy with what he just gave her, what _she_ just gave him. He has enough to fuel him for eons to come, even without touching her ever again (though he profoundly hopes that will never happen).

Clara pushes on his chest and half clambers on top of him, nibbling his lip. She pushes his hoodie up, his tshirt, kisses his chest, one over each heart and really that’s just offensive. He wants to tell her this, tell her how _ridiculous_ she is, but then she’s unzipped his trousers and in flash is mouthing him through the material of his boxers and he loses all coherent thought. “I was planning on something else,” she says, a mischievous glint in his eyes and things get pushed out of his brain so he can memorise this forever. How to train aardvarks to tap dance disappears and is replaced by the colour of her eyes, in this light, as she looks up through her lashes. The 6943rd decimal of pi vanishes in place of the way she shimmies her hips in the air and her head dips. Names of countless stars dissipate in exchange for the smirk on her face when she pulls down his boxers and _kisses_ the tip of his dick. _Jesus fucking christ, Clara_.

He opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ , but she ducks her head and envelopes him in the wet warmth of her mouth. His breath stutters, his back arches and really it’s incredibly uncomfortable on the metal grate of the floor, with his clothes half shucked up, but it’s so blissfully perfect he could cry. She bobs slowly up and down, tongue circling the underside of his cock, and his hips jerk up. He tries to keep himself still, he slides his fingers into the grate around him in attempt to quash the urge, but he can’t help it, can’t stop the spasm that convulses through him, can’t stop the gravelly groan that tumbles from his throat. A broken “ _Clara_ ,” escapes as she sucks in her cheeks, and grazes her teeth so lightly against the tender skin. She lifts off with a wet noise and licks a stripe down the side of his dick, her hand joining her mouth to run its length.

“Clara—“  
“Hush,” she kisses his thigh and shifts so he can see her heels as she kneels between his legs. She smiles roguishly, then drops her head without breaking eye contact, swallows him whole. This time she uses her hand as well as her mouth, adding pressure to the blinding heat blazing on his skin. “I can’t—“ she hums and he breaks off into a deep growl, knuckles whitening as he grips the grate. She keeps humming, adding a low pulsing vibration to the hotness wrapped around him, and just when he thinks she can’t possibly do anymore, her free hand dips to cup his balls and he cries out, orgasm crashing brilliant white into his nerves, rippling through his body, her name an echo on his lips.

When he can see again, and his hearts have calmed their heated parley at this sudden influx of sensation, he’s aware of her half lying across him, hand idly stroking circles on his chest. He clears his throat. “I’ve missed you, Clara Oswald.”  
She laughs and he feels it reverberate in his bones, slip into in his hearts and settle. “Well don’t worry, daft old man,” she shifts to kiss him on the nose, her face glowing, “I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realised, after I'd written this, that it was similar to one of my favourite fics, [Just Say Yes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2502215/chapters/5555261) by [loversandantiheroes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes). As I was going back through and editing it, something clicked and I realised. Evidently I am more inspired by works than I realise, but I thought I'd leave it here so that after reading this you can go and read a much much better one that will heat your cheeks while simultaneously warming the cockles of your heart.


	7. The Zygon Invasion: Questionable Underwear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara finds something in the TARDIS wardrobe that perplexes her. She seeks the Doctor out to find out just why he owns such a thing. Clara's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I know, it's taken me ages to update; I still haven't even seen the conclusion to this episode yet. This one really did not want to be written and I really struggled with it, hence the briefness of it. Honestly, I think I was just excessively miffed that every fucking episode so far has been a two parter. The whole fucking SERIES so far has been cut into 2 part chunks each time I HATE IT.
> 
> Anyway. This is really daft, forgive me. I love each and every one of you for having such patience with me. You're all smashing.
> 
> These characters belong to the BBC, I am not in possession of them (only an increasing exasperation at Moffat).

One of Clara’s favourite rooms in the TARDIS, is the wardrobe. She loves everything about it, the size of it, the sheer volume of honestly _everything_ from any era in there, the history encompassed in one room. It’s like walking into the V &A with a whole pantheon of costumes and extravagant accessories waiting to be lived in. Which is why she often spends idle afternoons there, rummaging through ball gowns from pre-renaissance France, battle armour from Japan in the 8th century, clothing made from sand from a millennia they’re yet to visit. Which is also why, on a strangely quiet Thursday, she comes across something that baffles her. Even after the hats taller than houses, the socks that clean themselves, the leg warmers (anything relating to the 80’s really), the fascinators, the numerous musical cummerbunds, the feather boas, the heels, _even_ the coat made from actual banana skins that somehow never rots or smells of anything other than shepherd’s pie, even after all that, she still finds something that baffles her. So naturally, she immediately pockets said garment, and goes to find the Doctor.

She finds him in the kitchen, sat at the table fiddling with a toaster (probably hers). She fingers the garment in her pocket, struggling to fathom why he has them. Even some of her strangest boyfriends never had anything like these. “What are these?” She holds up the item in question. He doesn’t look up at her, only frowns at the toaster as it _mewls_ when he prods it. She reminds herself to ask him about that one later.  
“What?”  
“These. What are they and why do you have them?”  
He sighs. “Take your pick. Present from the Queen, used as part of a barter in key planet wide negotiations, found them in a shrub in—“ He abruptly stops talking as she drops them over the toaster. She watches a blush creep up his neck.  
“Where did you find those?”  
“In the wardrobe.” When he says nothing, she suppresses a snort and continues, “So… you have question mark boxers because?”  
“Well—“  
She holds up her hand, biting the inside of her cheek to stop her from smiling and interrupts him, “Wait wait, no I want to rephrase that. Why do you own a pair of red silk boxers with honestly what look like diamond encrusted question marks on?”  
He shifts in his seat, looks at her almost defiantly. “I used to wear questions marks.”   
“I know.”   
“How do you know?”  
“I’ve been in that wardrobe, I’ve seen every outfit you’ve worn, _including_ the Frank N Furter costume.” She’d had to take a minute to calm her breathing when she’d found that one, images of him in fishnets and a sequinned garter belt flashing dangerously in her brain.  
“ _That_ was Jack’s fault.”   
“Jack as in the infamous Jack Harkness you keep mentioning?”  
He raises his eyebrows and points at her, “You’re not meeting him.”   
“Why not?”  
“Because you’ll get on like a house on fire and never want to see me again.”   
She laughs and swats at his hand, face softening. He’s been making similar comments with increasing frequency, about how she’ll leave him, how she’ll disappear. All with an air of humour trying to hide whatever’s lurking beneath that he’s so scared of admitting. _Idiot_ , she thinks fondly. “You’re an idiot. And apparently, an idiot with silken boxers, Doctor.”  
He sighs loudly. “I was partial to question marks. I spent a lot of time in the 80’s.”  
 “Dark times.” She teases, picking up the boxers and dangling them in front of him. “Do you still wear them?”   
He hesitates, warily because he knows her. “Sometimes.”  
“Put them on.”   
He stills, eyes fixed on her face. She can feel the air suddenly change, hear it crackle, feel the heat tingling in the implication of her words. His eyes darken, and she smirks, goading him on with her lips alone. He stands up, shifting to stand in front of her, inches from her. He leans down, his lips hovering over her own and murmurs, “You’re the boss.”

He steps back from her, and pulls off his hoodie draping it carefully across the chair. He lifts an eyebrow as he unbuckles his belt, sliding it little by little from the loops. Clara swallows, ignores the heat creeping into her face. His mouth curls at the corners as he lifts his t-shirt over his head, placing it atop his hoodie. Like he knows how turned on she is, like he _knows_ this has unexpectedly backfired in his favour. He breaks eye contact only to untie his boots, and she feels suddenly unsteady at seeing him knelt before her but then, like he can fucking sense it, he looks up and grins at her and she inwardly swears. She crosses her arms and fights to keep the smirk on her face so as not to give away how _hot_ it is to watch him undress this deliberately in front of her, even though he fucking _knows_.

Boots off, mismatched socks joining them, his trousers come next, and suddenly he’s down to his boxers with nothing else, smiling deliciously at her. He watches her as he then pulls them off, studies her reaction, chuckling lowly when she sucks in a breath because he’s _naked_ and she’s still not quite used to this _almost but not actually fucking_ thing they’ve got going on. She’s on a knife edge waiting for the day when their resolve finally snaps, when they finally just fucking get on with it and quit pussyfooting around with all this maddeningly drawn out foreplay.

He’s been watching her as her thoughts derailed, images pulsing behind her eyes, smirking like he knows everything she’s thinking, and she can feel her skin spark, tingle and vibrate. Her blood is humming in her veins, and she feels in itch buried in her spine. He lifts the boxers from her hand and she doesn’t understand how she can possibly feel like _she’s_ the one with no fucking clothes on, but then he slips them on and she barely refrains from moaning at the sight. He looks utterly devilish, divine, like he’s just asking to be taken apart. _This is getting out of hand_. She needs to regain control, reclaim her power of the situation.

She pulls her phone from her back pocket and takes a picture before he can react. He frowns and she shrugs. “For prosperity. And my own pleasure, when you’re busy.” His frown deepens until it clicks and then he takes on a whole new look entirely. She manages a small “oh” before he strides across the space between them and presses his lips against hers bruisingly.

 ----

Later, she catches a glimpse of the infamous boxer shorts on the floor, and laughs. Long and loud and happy. He hides his face against her neck and grumbles, content.


	8. The Zygon Inversion: What runs beneath us.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor’s words are echoing around her head, of his torment, of the war, and she can’t shift this sinister feeling that’s been building around them. She knows she’s said the wrong thing, she has to fix this, however she can. Clara’s POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL okay so it’s been a while but I’m in denial so I’ve been avoiding this. BUT HEY! I FINALLY WROTE SMUT. It’s finally done, and it came out all kinds of painful and distressing, and many times I had to walk away from it to try regain composure. It’s also surprisingly lengthy, coming in at just over 4K which was honestly accidental but consider it my apology. I also made them say things and it makes my heart hurt. I can feel the end is imminent and oh boy does it show in this chapter.
> 
> This is too much. Forgive me.
> 
> Characters are property of the BBC.

“I’ll be the judge of time.”  
She can hear it, in his voice. Something she’s very rarely heard, and she hates it. She can feel her heart tighten, her muscles twitching, voice in her head berating her for bringing up the one topic she knows he’ll never talk with her about, the one thing that could be deemed as cruel. Her death. Clara watches him walk up the stairs, her head in turmoil, but she had to ask him, she had to say it because she knows he senses something imminent. She knows because she feels it, too. In the back of her mind, in the deepest corners of her heart she feels something coming, something dark, something violent. Something that’s going to tear them apart. She needs to know he’ll be okay when that happens.

As he’s about to disappear she calls after him, and he pauses. He looks more tired than she’s ever seen him. “Doctor,” she walks up the stairs, throwing her coat off and hovers behind him, uncertain and apprehensive of how this is going to pan out, “I’m sorry.”  
 He turns and she almost winces. Almost regrets saying it. He looks so tired. “Whatever for, Clara?”  
 “For asking. For leaving you,” she shrugs, trying to hold her nerve.  
“It wasn’t your fault.”   
“No,” she agrees, nodding and watching his face carefully ( _tired, defeated, so lost, my doctor_ ) “It wasn’t. Wasn’t yours either.”  
He makes a disbelieving noise and rubs his hand over his face. When he drops it he looks at her steadily, defeat etching into his every visage, “It’s always my fault, Clara.”

Something sharp in her chest spikes. She can see something dark enveloping him, something toxic and malicious, crawling its way under his skin. Creeping into his bones and his eyes. She can feel it filling up the space between them, pushing them further and further away from each other. She doesn’t know how to help, how she can fix this… _this isn’t him_. The air feels thick and heavy, as though gravity has suddenly decided it’s had enough and wants to bring everything in existence crashing down. He smiles and it cuts through her, slices into her chest, across her throat. He smiles and it’s agonising because he’s still trying to comfort her, still trying to reassure her, to show he’s listening to her, taking in everything she’s ever said to him, _trying_ , and it makes her feel nauseated.

Just like that, she makes a decision. She takes his hand, quells the urge to tell him how much she loves his hands, and in her mind asks the TARDIS to help her: it won’t work without her on Clara’s side, and she knows she can trust the TARDIS to lead them where he needs.

She pecks him lightly on the lips and tugs at his hand, “Come on.” She pulls him down the corridor, ignoring the way he follows without complaint. So quiet and obliging. It unsettles her. There’s an unnerving silence building between them and she can’t stand it. Above all the cacophony of the past few months, of them dancing around each other, chaste kisses and long glances, building and simmering between them, there’s been something else. Something much more sinister, much more darker at play. She squeezes his hand without thinking and pulls him into a room that appears on the next turn.

It’s not her bedroom, and from the way he tenses slightly she thinks it must be his. She’s never really been in his bedroom, wasn’t even sure he really had one, but he does, and it’s nothing like she imagined but somehow exactly the same. There are a lot of books, lots of odds and ends, things he’s tinkered with. A bed added almost as an afterthought. She wonders how much he really sleeps. Wonders why he tensed as she pulled him into the room ( _is this too much? am I pushing too far? tell me how I can help_ ).

She pulls him over to the bed and gently pushes him onto it to sit down on its edge. Without hesitating she sits in his lap, knees locked on either side of his hips. She knows what he wants and won’t ask for, knows what he needs but won’t admit. She pulls her arms around him, his head dropping against her chest. The tiny exhalation of breath is all the evidence she needs.

She strokes his hair, rubs soothing circles on the back of his neck and scalp. His arms have wrapped themselves around her, clinging to her in a gesture they’ve never shared. She thinks back on all the time they’ve had, all the adventures they’ve been on, all the miscommunications the lies the progressions ( _“I’m not your boyfriend, Clara”_ ). They’ve come so far together, done so much. They’re so much closer now, so in touch with each other and yet somehow they still fuck things up ( _“I’ve found Gallifrey”_ ). He withdraws when he’s frightened by the emotions he’s feeling. She bristles and bites when he cuts too deep. They’re bad for each other, they’re ruined for anyone else ( _“And one day the memory of that will hurt so much I won’t be able to breath”_ ), for everything, but they’re so _good_.

She doesn’t want it to go. Doesn’t want to lose this, this now with him wrapped around her, breathing her in like he’s trying to become part of her ( _“I need you”_ ). Every touch between them is revolutionary. His touch makes her feel like fire is running through her veins, like the whole of creation is glittering under her skin, makes her feel so _alive_. She remembers them darting around each other, terrified to even brush hands, but now? She’s never felt this kind of intimacy with anyone, never felt anything like it. Yet they keep increasing in proximity, they keep becoming closer, keep growing, becoming more entwined and fantastic with every heartbeat. He makes her feel like every breath she breaths is of the universe itself. _Clara, my Clara_. So why does this feel like the end? Why does this feel like everything is about to disappear? How can they have found something so profound, nurtured something so deep rooted, for it to be ripped away from them? It’s unjustified, it’s cruel, it’s agonising _it’s not fair_. She rests her head against his for a moment to compose herself. This isn’t about her, or not directly at least. This about the Doctor, _her_ Doctor. She lifts her head, and brings her hands round to lift up his chin so she can see his face; she’s given him time enough to hide.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she kisses him softly, briefly, “and I don’t just mean me.” He frowns at her and she settles more steadily in his lap, pausing to try figure out how she can say this. His words bounce and echo in her head from mere hours ago ( _“I did worse things than you can ever imagine and when I close my eyes—“_ ), she has to get this right, has to explain. “You’ll have had hundreds of people tell you, from tens of species, across thousands of planets, that it wasn’t your fault, and I know you. You won’t have listened to any of them. You’ll have nodded or scowled, thanked them maybe, or just walked away. You have to forgive yourself. I think you’re nearly there, you’re closer to it. I’d like to think it was me that was helping you along but it I can’t get you there. You have to do this yourself. All those people, all _your_ people, you saved them, countless times. Millions of people, billions of them, life forms and half lives alike, you’ve saved. There is so much more happiness in the universe because of you, Doctor.” She can feel him tensing beneath her, feel him teetering on the edge of moving away, of not listening and telling her to leave, and she knows, she knows if she doesn’t say this now something won’t allow her to ever say it. “ _Listen_. Without everyone that you’ve saved, without the planets and the suns and the galaxies, without the fucking dust you’ve saved, Doctor, there wouldn’t be as much laughter, as much happiness, as much love.  
The universe would be a much colder, hollower place than it is now. You’ve seen everything, life running its course, battles lost and won, wars waged, more hatred than ever imaginable but more kindness even than that. Love and laughter, and light, wonders and marvels that the like of will never been seen again. You’ve taken but you’ve created so much more. And I need you to forgive yourself, I need you to because when I’m gone, I need to know that you’re going to be okay. And I need to know that you’re not going to do anything stupid, because I am going to die, Doctor.” He winces and she cups his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her, “I am. You know it better than most, death is a constant in this silly old universe of ours, and one day, it’s going to happen to me, too. It could be tomorrow, it could be next Thursday, it could be a hundreds years from now, but one day I’ll not be here.”  
“Clara,” his voice breaks and he clears his throat, a bitterness seeping in at the edges, “How could you think I don’t know? Every second I have with you means I’m closer to losing you, every second that passes means your death creeps in, tightening the vice, and there’s nothing I can do about it nothing—“ he breaks off and closes his eyes, a snarl still formed on his lips. ( _“Longest month of my life”_ )  
“I know, I know. What I’m saying is,” she scrambles for the words, tries to pull them from where they’ve congealed in her chest, “what I’m saying is don’t let it destroy you. Don’t let any of this destroy you. Remember all the good you’ve done, all the lives you’ve saved, all the wonder you’ve created… Remember me.” He snorts and his hands tighten momentarily on her hips. She says nothing about the tears on his cheeks. “I mean as we are now, as we’ve become. What we’ve done together, everything we’ve had. Don’t think of me as something static, as a fixed point. I’m never that, _never_. Don’t let my death be an excuse for you to fall apart, don’t you dare. You remember me as the way I hold your hand, as the way I smile at you when you’re not paying attention, as the way I feel, the way I sound.  
There’ll always be a me and you running around somewhere in this universe. Years after I’ve been gone, after you’ve changed your face, after other travellers, other friends, other lovers, there’ll still be us. We’ll always exist in time, always exist in space somewhere. There’ll always be us too scared to touch each other, scared not to touch each other. Don’t let it break you, let it help you. Let it keep you, warm and real. Remember this,” she picks up his hand, presses it against her heart, “and this,” she kisses him tenderly, “never my absence. Always my warmth, always my life.”

He makes a small noise, something that comes from deep within him, from a fathomless cavern of agony she’s only rarely glimpsed, and it sinks into her ever pore. An intense grief submerges her and she feels like she’s drowning. She swallows, and forces herself to continue, “For now though, in whatever time we have left, see me as I am now. Living, breathing, present and _alive_. I’m here with you _right now_ and I won’t let you think of me like I’m already gone. Don’t see me as a ghost, as though I’ve already left, see me as I am right now. Heart beating, lungs pulling in oxygen, sat with you, short height, round face and all.” She smiles softly and wipes the tears from his face. She kisses his forehead, his temples, his eyelids, cheekbones, corners of his mouth. Kisses his nose, his ridiculous eyebrows, his jaw, chin, finally his lips. She murmurs _I love you_ with every touch, every breath.

_I love you._

_I love you I love you I love you_.

“Clara Oswald. My Clara.” Her name falls from his lips in wonderment. His hands move up to cup her face and he leans in to kiss her, with an aching tenderness, a kind of gentle intimacy that takes her breath away. For a moment she feels lost in it, lost in the emotions pouring through, feels like she’s standing at the heart of a burning sun, absorbing all the heat all the fire all the life it’s generating. For just one moment, she’s the centre of the universe.

He shifts to drop kisses about her face, moving back easily when she finds the bottom of her shirt and pulls it over her head. He doesn’t hesitate, already has his lips against her skin by the time the shirt is on the floor, lavishing her collarbones in gentle, unhurried kisses. He’s unclipped her bra before she’s had time to even think of doing it herself, flattening his tongue against her nipple, and rubbing encouraging circles with his thumbs against her hips as she mewls in response. He murmurs her name against her breasts and she bites her lip to quell the noise in the her throat, but it escapes anyway, his hands tightening on her hips. He shifts suddenly and wraps his arms around her, lifts her up and lies her on the bed, his lips somehow never leaving her skin. He leaves wet kisses down her stomach, unbuttons her jeans. She sits up to pull off her heels and hesitates, meets his eyes. _Not this time, this is different_. She throws them to the side and lies back, lifting her hips so he can drag her jeans off her legs.

He kisses the skin below her hip, trails more down her thigh when his fingers pull at her knickers, pulling them off and throwing them to join her scattered clothing. His fingers wrap around her knees and she’ll never understand the fascination he has with her joints, but he slowly trails his fingers along the curve where her thigh meets calf, skims the skin on the inside of her knee and presses a gentle kiss there. The absurdity of it, the sudden domestic familiarity makes her choke and she has to drop her head back onto the bed so he can’t see her face. She can’t escape the clawing feeling of inevitability even here.

His fingers coast across her skin, hands pushing gently to spread her legs and he kisses the top of her thigh, bites ever so lightly, and she knows that’s as rough as this will get, knows that this time is different. This is a one time only. It isn’t haphazard snogging in a cupboard, it’s not heated foreplay after some kind of argument, it’s no where near the definition of fucking. This, here and now, this is making love. Part of her cringes at the term because she’s always been embarrassed by it to a degree, and christ _she’s a grown woman_ for crying out loud, she can say the word sex, but there’s no other term for what this is. It’s not having sex, it’s more than that. Deeper. Intimate.

Clara sucks in a sharp breath when there’s suddenly a tongue flattened against her clit, when he sucks and she swears gutturally, fingers burying into his hair. He sucks and rolls her clit against his tongue, hands sliding up to hold her hips down as she cants against his mouth. His name falls from her lips, jagged and breathy, and he hums against her in response. She can feel it starting to build, feel the wave forming, swell as it grows near. Her hips twitch and she moans loudly, fingers digging into his scalp when he dips his tongue between her folds. He laps at her, alternating between this and lavishing her clit with attention, humming in reward whenever she keens beneath him. She manages to lift her head and meet his eyes. For a second they’re both still, then he breaks then silence. “ _Clara_ ,” and she comes to the vibration of her name against her, his own falling from her mouth half broken, half pleading.

When she is aware of her surroundings again, she finds him drawing circles around her hip bones, pressing the occasional kiss to her stomach. Immediately she pulls him up by the chin to kiss him, long, languid, and deep. She can taste herself on his tongue. Almost as the thought enters her mind, a muffled groan tumbles against her lips, and she smiles. “You’re still wearing clothes,” she murmurs, pulling away to tug at his hoodie. He complies and shifts to pull it off, his jumper going over his head and adding the last ounce of chaos to his hair that her fingers hadn’t yet managed. She sits up and unbuckles his belt, tugging it from the loops, a low tingle in her gut as the noise triggers a memory of something similar not so long ago. Her hands immediately go to the buttons of his trousers, but there they stop when his own envelope them and she looks up. He’s gazing at her, affection and fondness and something so thick and heavy the air around them feels leaden.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says quietly, letting go of her hands to cup her face and kiss her. They kiss slowly, a heady mixture of longing and devotion colouring the corners. She slides her hands back to his trousers, unbuttoning at a pace enough for him to stop her. He doesn’t and he only breaks the kiss to pull off his boots and kick his trousers off, boxers with them so they’re both naked, both able to feel the press of skin against skin, finally _finally_ after all this time. Clara swears internally at how long it’s taken them to get here. To reach this point.

They kiss and fumble and christ, they’re meant to be adults but she’s so distracted by the feeling of him utterly naked under her hand that she bizarrely forgets they’re supposed to be having sex, instead wondering at the sensation as her hands skim across his back and thighs. They’re both nervous, both anxious for so many reasons, and it buzzes in the air around them.

She doesn’t want him to lose his nerve, doesn’t want herself to, so brings herself back to the present and speaks, “Tell me what you need, Doctor.” He shakes his head minutely but she sees it, so she stresses “ _Anything_ ,” as she squeezes his hand and he groans.  
“You,” he grumbles against her mouth, seeming unwilling to allow them stop touching in any way, “Just you.”  
“Then I’m yours,” she moves to lie back on the bed, looks up at him and repeats, “ _I’m yours_ ,” and she means it. Now and forever. In any world, in any galaxy, any universe. Unequivocal and absolute.  
He leans over her gracefully, carefully, like he’s afraid any weight will shatter her. He places his hands by her head, bends one knee to place it aside her hip, and honestly if weren’t for the underlying air of finality that’s thickening around them, she’d find this all unfathomably arousing. But maybe it’s better, maybe it’s better that they’re not shoving each other against walls, or fucking against whatever hard surface they can find. Maybe this right now is what needs to happen.

He dips down to press a gentle kiss to her lips, his breath stuttering when her hand slides between them and grips him, guiding him to her entrance. They lock eyes, and she urges him on, breath catching in her throat as he slides into her. He pauses, jaw flexing, obviously anxious about her hurting her. Her head fills only with _move, Doctor_ and he obliges, the vast amount of skin to skin contact making his touch telepathy inevitable. He hisses and drops his head against her shoulder as he pushes slowly inside her, until his hips are against her. She bites her lip, waiting for her body to adjust, to relax and allow the slight pain to abate. They stay like that for a moment, her fingers slipping into his hair, until she tenses her muscles around him and he chokes out a whine against her skin. He lifts his head to kiss her, after which she whispers “ _Yours_ ,” in his ear. He groans quietly, and finally begins to move. The pace he sets fits the mood but quickly it becomes tantalising, maddeningly slow and enticing. She hooks her legs around him, lifts her hips against him, gratifying in the low grumble that vibrates from his chest. His hands skim her waist, across her stomach and her breasts, as he thrusts still yet tortuously deliberate. The build this time is slower, still there but building from her toes, swelling in her bones, crackling under her skin. She can feel her body begin to flush, blood pooling at the surface but so _slowly_ she could scream.

“ _Doctor_ ,” she hadn’t realised she’d spoken until he leans down to kiss her, whispers her name in return. Finally his hips quicken and she rocks against him, moaning and arching her back, as they meet together again, again, again. As their pace quickens, the air fills with an urgency, a pressing need that hollows out the space they’re in, terrifying and exciting all at once. As she creeps closer and closer to the edge, he presses wet kisses to her collar bones, against her lips as she moans, thrusts becoming less controlled. He always knows what she needs, always, so says her name, drops it again and again against her skin like a reverent prayer until she’s blinded by it and comes, back arching, hands grasping at the sheets beneath her.

Still vaguely aware in her post-orgasmic bliss, she feels his hips stutter, and she knows he’s close, knows he’s almost there so says what she knows he wants, he needs. Says what she always says to him but never in the same words, always in something different, something insignificant, something commonplace, “I love you.” As the words reach his ear he makes a strangled noise, half murmured words tripping from his lips as he falls over the edge and comes.

She strokes his hair as the wave settles and leaves behind only a pleasant ache in them, the reality of what she’d finally said hitting her. She knows she meant it, knows she does. She’d promised to Danny those words were his, that they belonged only to him and no one else, but even then they both knew. She doesn’t feel like she’s betrayed Danny as part of her had been expecting. Doesn’t feel the guilt nagging in the back of her mind anymore, either. But she feels like she’s delivered the final blow, dropped the axe on any possibility of this lasting longer. If only she hadn’t said it, the universe might not come to rip them apart. But the words are out there now, loud and clear, for all to find. Now there’s no stopping what is coming for them.

“Clara,” he mumbles, shaking her out of her unnerving trail of mind. His voice is hoarse and deep, rumbling from his chest and she smiles, feels it warm her blood. He lifts himself, trying none to gracefully to slip out of her, and rolls to her side so he can face her. She turns on her side and smiles at him. “You’re thinking.”  
“Isn’t that normally my line?” she asks, prodding lightly at his chest.  
“Normally we’re not pressed against each other stark naked, your every thought consequently streaming into my brain.” She fights to keep the smile on her face, clear her mind. He watches her quietly, and then because she can’t stand it she breaks the silence.  
“I shouldn’t have—“   
“I love you,” he cuts her off, and her mind grinds to a halt, her heart beating like thunder in her chest. Vaguely she wonders if he can hear it. “I’m not saying it because I feel obliged to return the gesture. I’m saying it because I mean it. Clara Oswald. I love you.” He kisses her tenderly, “I love you,” drops a kiss on her nose and takes a gentle hold of her face, “I love you I love you I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW I want to throw up myself but I felt it was time they finally said the words before we got into a Ten/Rose situation. I’m not that much of a sadist [eyes RTD]. I hope this was both steamy and made you want to gouge your hearts from your chests, dear readers. God help us all.


	9. Sleep No More: Let's give fingering a whole new meaning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara’s interested in the ancient Time Lord trick of sucking fingers to discover the date. Things do not go, quite as expected. The Doctor’s POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck I had to write something utterly ridiculous after the pain of the last chapter, so I sat this morning and made sure I wrote something that made me laugh. I’ve always been a little curious about this supposed Time Lord trickery, and may or may not have become a little curious about what would happened if it were someone else’s fingers…
> 
> I’m going to sit in the rubbish bin and reside over my kingdom of fellow trash pieces. 
> 
> The BBC are the sole owners of these characters, as much as I despair. JUST FUCKING LOOK AFTER CLARA, OKAY? OKAY???

He walks towards one of the screens as he sticks a finger in his mouth. Then holds it over his shoulder, hesitates. “38th century,” he sucks his index finger again. A familiar tang, one of only seven so really this is the easy bit. “Tuesday.”  
“38th century? You can tell all that just by sucking your finger?” Clara looks at him, a fond smile on her lips, and he feels his chest tighten.  
“It’s in the air, Clara. Time Lord trick,” he waggles his eyebrows and she laughs, looking around them. He’s not sure he trusts that look on her face.   
“Interesting. What else can you tell?”  
He narrows his eyes slightly, refraining from commenting on her stepping closer, “Depends. Sometimes what’s in the atmosphere, what time of year it is, the date if I really try—“   
“What would happen, for instance, if it was someone else’s finger?”  
He opens and closes his mouth. There’s a twinkle in her eyes that makes his skin prickle every time he sees it. He remembers the last time she looked like that, when she’d stripped naked and stood before him, everything that followed, gasps and groans played on out on the floor like some kind of pornographic film. It’s playing in his mind now, the noises she made above him, the smirk of her mouth when she’d—  
“ _Doctor_.”  
Her voice brings him back to the present. A similar smirk is planted on her lips and for someone who isn’t remotely telepathic, he wonders how she’s able to read his mind as well as she does. “Hmm?”   
“What would happen?”   
“Not really sure. Never tried it before,” he smiles at her, feels a pull in his gut and glances around him. The crew have walked down the corridor, are lingering near a door at the end.  
“Want to find out?” She smiles suggestively and quirks an eyebrow.  
“Shall I just go fetch Chopra?” He innocently points over his shoulder, knowing it’ll rile her. Press her buttons. She laughs low under her breath, her jaw clenching, and he thinks for a minute how they might just scrap this whole escapade so he can take her back to the TARDIS and devour her.  
“Git,” she murmurs, a ghost of a kiss gracing his lips when she speaks. She lifts her hand and waggles her fingers between their faces. He smirks and takes her hand, fingers idling brushing the skin. He can feel it in his whole body, his whole being, where the pad of his finger connects to the skin on her knuckle. She can feel it, too; he remembers once hearing a flash of her voice in his head, questioning whether Time Lord’s had electricity running in their veins. He’s often wondered the same about humans.

She’s watching him steadily, head tilted slightly to the side, curve of her mouth etched onto her lips. He kisses her knuckles, then with a wink, slips her index finger into this mouth. He feels as much as hears the small intake of breath, as he sucks on her finger, mirth dancing in his eyes as he watches her expression. She’s good at controlling it, he knows better than most, but he also knows when she’s teetering. What she looks like when she starts to lose composure. He swirls his tongue around her finger, then slowly pulls it from his mouth.

“On Earth it’s actually Friday, in your time,” which is curious but it’s true; he’s honestly never done this before so part of him is finding this exciting for wholly other reasons, “I can tell that you used some kind of violet shampoo when you washed your hair this morning,” she snorts and he rolls his tongue around in his mouth, looking thoughtful, “Have you been into my mustard cupboard?”  
She laughs loudly and shoves him lightly, “One of them had broken and was growing into its own subspecies, so I cleaned it up,” He grumbles at her, and she smiles, before adding, “So what else?” 

He lifts a brow and slips her middle finger into his mouth. Now, in his mind, he’d had this planned out. Had this worked out the second she suggested it, because it was going to be another case just like the boxers where it backfires in his favour, and she gives him that _look_ for the rest of the day; bordering on aggressive, but mostly lying between desperation and blinding arousal. He _loves_ that look. If he could nestle that look between his hearts, he’d do it in a second. So he’d had this planned. He was going to be suggestive, he was going to be provocative and pull her far enough into arousal until she was heavy lidded and squeezing her legs together and then he was going to walk away because when they finally got to be alone, whatever followed would be heart stopping. World ending. He was going to be so painfully erotic that she’d have to steady herself against the wall before she could follow, because Clara heady and weak kneed at his hand was white hot in his nerves, crackles of fire licking under his skin. Clara when she looked up at him like that, with nothing but him in her eyes, made him feel worthy again. Made him feel alive.

But that’s not what happened, _of course it wasn’t_. Because she was good at this, she learnt fast, and they’d been together now for so long, she knew him. She knew exactly what he liked, exactly what he wanted, without him even having to _look_ at her which was a whole other kind of thrill in itself, and Clara knows. She knows he’s a touch telepath, knows because she’s been on the receiving end of it more times than he can count, so of course she fucking _projects_ images into his mind as soon as her middle finger succumbs to the warmth of his mouth.

This time, he feels his breath stutter, feels his heart jolt and miss several beats, thudding erratically in his chest. This time, his eyes are the ones that go wide, pupils growing, pulse thrumming under his skin, a flash of heat running down his spine. She projects images of them together, times past and times yet to come. Fantasies she’s played out, things she’s imagined for months before they even dared glance at once another. The image of her masturbating to the sound of his voice on the earpiece, the noise of her gasping as he fucks her against a bookshelf in the library, the sight of her legs giving out as she’s perched flushed and naked on his face, dewey and pink under a golden light. Clara biting her lip to stop her making noise as he bends her over the desk in her _classroom_ , _fuck_ , Clara smirking like the devil as she drops to her knees and takes him in her mouth, Clara kissing him as he moans when she handcuffs him to a bed, the only garment on her body the black heels she wears on her feet.

And then, so vivid he can’t tell if it’s actually happening, the ghost of her hand against his dick, pressed against the wall with the crew in the room adjoining, her fingers in his mouth as he sucks and tries to hold in the groans that rumble from his chest. Her touch firmer, faster, twisting, the barest scrap of nails against the skin—

Her hand falls from his mouth and he throws an arm out to steady himself against the wall. She’s watching him, head still tilted, eyebrow raised, smirk firmly on her lips. She shifts to kiss him deeply, wet and filthy until he’s truly struggling to breath and she drops back onto her heels and smiles. He very nearly drops to his knees and begs.  
“Interesting,” she says, like he just told her some trivial fact concerning bats. “Come on, the others are waiting,” her voice dripping like honey, cascading over him and god, he knows he’s ruined. Clara Oswald. The universe will come crashing around him, time will melt and recede to nothing but a memory and still she will burn at the centre of him, never diminishing, never fading.

He can see in her eyes she’s affected, too, it isn’t just him. He can tell she’s itching for them to be alone, and while it doesn’t help matters remotely, it makes him feel the tiniest bit more in control.

“Clara Oswald,” his voice sounds almost unfamiliar, low and gravelly, _embarrassing_ if he actually had the capacity to feel anything other than a throbbing arousal, “You, my dear, are in trouble,” she raises an eyebrow, _oh yeah?_ , and he nods, clenching his hand to resist the urge to touch himself _here_ with people not 20 steps away, “ _Big_ trouble.” He emphasises, and she _giggles_ , so deliciously and so prettily and has to squeeze his eyes shut.

He decides in that moment, nothing could compare with the graceful noise of her delight.


	10. Face the Raven: Do not take from me your laughter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the scenes of Face the Raven. Clara has signed her own death warrant, and for once in his the entirety of his lives, there is nothing he can do about it. The Doctor's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really know how to begin. I have nothing left inside. I did not want to watch this episode so writing was just as agonising. It's very short. I've taken away the bit of her running and leaving, which I'm very on the fence about, as I feel it's unkind to Clara but I'm a mess and didn't know how else to approach this without merely just writing the word 'fuck' a thousand times over. It was going to be a fix it fic, but the way I've been writing it so far would make it feel like I wasn't doing her justice. This series will be continuing and I guess, from here on out, only in the Doctor's POV.
> 
> The title comes from the poem 'Your Laughter' by Pablo Neruda which I will include at the end. Be warned; it will fucking hurt.
> 
> Everything belongs to the BBC, even my crooked broken soul which they have destroyed. Cheers, BBC.

“What about me?” He says it quietly, words falling out of his mouth, everything melted away so only she remains. _Clara_.

He never would have said this before, he’s never come this close to confessing, to falling apart, not in any of his lives, any of his faces. After everyone, all of them. Sarah Jane. Rose. Amy. He came close, but this is different, this is harsher, more cruel. So real it cuts into his veins like ice, clawing at his hearts, settles maliciously in his bones. He feels like screaming, the void of space and time ripping every breath from his body. This can’t be happening. After every time he’s nearly lost her, every single fucking time, she finds him, but this. This is darker. This is the crescendo, a cacophony of finality howling in his ears, ripping the life from his body. Her every almost-death, becomes a precursor, a warning from the universe that it was coming. He should have known. Yet he’s felt it bubbling beneath them like a vicious undercurrent, felt it curling the very air he breathes throughout each second. He had known, merely blinded himself from it.

“If there was something I could do about that I would. Guess we’re both just gonna have to be brave.” There’s so much in the air, so much in her eyes. The whole universe dances and weeps in molten umber irises, glitters as the cosmos shines all the brighter to reach him, starlight glistening under her skin. He has so little time.  
“Clara—“ but before he can get the words out, before they can dislodge from his chest, she pulls him into a tight hug. He can feel the air leave his lungs, feel the rigidness of his stance, still too in shock to process anything other than what she’s done. What she’s done to him, what she’s done for the world, for creatures and sentient beings across the cosmos. What she’s done to herself.

“Everything you’re about to say, I already know,” he can feel the shake of her breath against his skin, warm and agonisingly real, “Don’t do it now. We’ve already had enough bad timing.” She steps back, too soon. He hasn’t got enough time. All the time in existence would never be enough, not for him. Not for Clara Oswald.  
“Don’t run. Stay with me,” he manages and she smiles, the sight of it almost destroying him. He only manages to scrap himself together to memorise her face, memorise everything. He refuses to lose more than he’s about to. His voice breaks when he whispers, “ _Please_.”

Her chin quivers, her smile slipping into something else. “In the end, everybody does this alone.”  
 “Clara,” her name, always her name, cascades from his lips. He doesn’t know how to do this without her, doesn’t understand the point. Seas crash and rage, storms crack and rupture, suns burn, life fades, memory crumbles into ash, into nothing, the universe devours each living soul, sinks its teeth in and bites. Here he stands, omniscient of existence, blind to everything but Clara. Wrath, ruin, love and pain, brandishing the totality of being in a stupendous searing cacophony. Clara Oswald drowns out every world, every whisper, every breath.

He kisses her, deep and harrowed. It isn’t good, it doesn’t help. Doesn’t do anything other than savage his hearts, slice across his chest and into his lungs, puncturing and tearing until he can no longer breathe. It _hurts_ but he can feel her heart thrumming in her lips, see her pulse blazing under her skin. Hear her exhale as they part and in the back of his mind he’s incandescent that she’s wasting her last breaths on him. Incandescent and excruciatingly captivated.  
“This is as brave as I know how to be,” she tilts her head, smiles as though it will comfort him, as though she isn’t about to disappear from beneath his very hands, “I know it’s gonna hurt you but please, be a little proud of me.”  
He almost chokes at the idea, as though he could ever be anything else, and she places her hand on his cheek. Wave after wave crashes into him, pouring from her mind and seeping into his skin. _I never wanted to leave you, I never wanted to go anywhere but with you. All the stars in all the galaxies, all the planets, all the life, I wouldn’t change a second of it. Remember what I said, Doctor. Remember. You’ve saved me enough already. I love you. I love you I love you I love you—_  
“Goodbye, Doctor.”

Her words echo in his mind, bounce under his skin swimming through his veins ( _I love you I love you_ ). He holds her hand in his and kisses her knuckles. He can’t let her go, he can’t do this without her. Every moment they’ve shared together, thousands and thousands of years, every second she has been a part of him, every second she has held his hearts in her hands, slipped into his chest and nestled inside.  _I love you._

She removes her hand, and steps back. Strangely, even as her death slips into the room and stands beside her, even as it grasps her soul in its hand and tugs, he doesn’t see it. He doesn’t see her leave, doesn’t see the light flicker and fade behind her eyes. He doesn’t see the last breath leave her body, or her heart stop. There is no flash like he’d expected, time doesn’t speed up or slow down, the world doesn’t crash around him. It doesn’t rain. There isn’t thunder, isn’t the rumble of the earth breaking beneath his feet. His hearts don’t stop. There is a scream, her scream, her life, and then there is nothing. No sound, no anguish, nothing.

He catches her as she falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Take bread away from me, if you wish,  
> take air away, but  
> do not take from me your laughter.
> 
> Do not take away the rose,  
> the lance flower that you pluck,  
> the water that suddenly  
> bursts forth in joy,  
> the sudden wave  
> of silver born in you.
> 
> My struggle is harsh and I come back  
> with eyes tired  
> at times from having seen  
> the unchanging earth,  
> but when your laughter enters  
> it rises to the sky seeking me  
> and it opens for me all  
> the doors of life.
> 
> My love, in the darkest  
> hour your laughter  
> opens, and if suddenly  
> you see my blood staining  
> the stones of the street,  
> laugh, because your laughter  
> will be for my hands  
> like a fresh sword.
> 
> Next to the sea in the autumn,  
> your laughter must raise  
> its foamy cascade,  
> and in the spring, love,  
> I want your laughter like  
> the flower I was waiting for,  
> the blue flower, the rose  
> of my echoing country.
> 
> Laugh at the night,  
> at the day, at the moon,  
> laugh at the twisted  
> streets of the island,  
> laugh at this clumsy  
> boy who loves you,  
> but when I open  
> my eyes and close them,  
> when my steps go,  
> when my steps return,  
> deny me bread, air,  
> light, spring,  
> but never your laughter  
> for I would die."  
> \-- Pablo Neruda


	11. Heaven Sent: I don't want to be your ghost.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor keeps seeing her everywhere. He talks to her and she answers back, he teases her and she smiles, he falls to ruin and she takes his hand. He's escaped, he's free, but not of her, not of her death, never of Clara Oswald. So many days have past, countless days and only one, the one he remembers. Her memory still as raw and ragged as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a mess. That episode made me want to swear and walk into the sea and never walk out again. What the FUCK. I'M IN SO MUCH PAIN.
> 
> Considering that Clara was his sole reason to keep going over billions of years (lmfao kill me) I have it in my head that each day he saw her, she was different, she said something or did something different. The only factor in the whole complex that ever changed, and because I'm a sadist/masochist I made it so that he'd only remember one, but we'd see a glimpse of just a few because apparently we haven't had enough pain.
> 
> I hope I've done this justice. 
> 
> I own nothing but I do want to swear at the BBC, quite a lot. So. There's that.

2 Billion Years. 2 Billion years of the same torment, over and over and _over_. He doesn’t remember each time, only the last, only the one where he got out. He laughs aloud in the burning suns of his home, familiarity prickling under skin, laughs because if he’d had to design something to truly torment, something to truly send him mad, that would have been it. Repeated punishment, enduring the first second of eternity. His grief refreshing anew for his best friend, for her, dying, her death becoming further and further away from him but still only inches behind him. Repeating her scream, her loss, her absence. Punishing himself further by putting her there, seeing her every day for over 2 billion years. Every day she’s there and yet she's not. And he can only remember today. Only remember one day of 2 billion years.

He’d had so much extra time with her, countless days and he only gets one.

\---

_114_

Beaten, bloodied, hopeless, he retreats into his mind, into the TARDIS where Clara waits for him.

“Look what you’ve done, you daft bugger,” she chides softly, taking up his bleeding hands. The skin is peeling away, blood mingling with dirt and gristle, bone almost visible in his knuckles. She frowns and sighs, tuts under her breath and helps him to a seat. She fetches a bowl with warm water, sits between his knees and bathes his sore hands. The water runs pink, the dirt lifts, the pain a balm to his aching hearts. She says nothing as she cleans his knuckles, carefully wraps them in bandages.

He sucks in a breath when she ties the bandage, the pain biting that fraction too deeply for him to hold reality at bay. She smiles in apology and kisses the bandages, the barest hint of contact. Always mindful of his wounds. How had he never seen that before? How had he never noticed she did that?

He lifts a hand to cup her face and she leans into his touch, hands perched on his knees, skin wrinkled from the water. “Come on, up and at ‘em, Doctor,” she grins and kisses the palm of his hand, “No time to sulk.”

 ---

_4,450,913,035_

He slides against the wall, the cool harshness of it comforting. He closes his eyes and slips into the TARDIS, imagines himself walking round, racing, shouting, lashing out, howling until his throat is raw as sandpaper, until the tears have left his eyes and he has nothing left to give. Clara stands, her back to him, in front of the chalk board.

He shouts, he cries, he bellows. Still she stands. Unmoving, unflinching. “Clara!” He needs to see her, he just needs to see her and it’ll be enough. “Talk to me!” His voice cracks, breaks and he falls with it. Slumped against the railing, breath ragged, hearts torn. He’s so fucking _angry_ with her. That she left him so easily. That she was so _stupid_ so _reckless_ , so _him_. She wasn’t here to feel this pain, she wasn’t here to live with the grief and agony she’d caused. Why did she have to be so brave? Why couldn’t she be more selfish? He laughs at the memory of calling her egotistical and a sob swiftly follows. Why didn’t she fight for her life? “Please, Clara…” he hears the tears hit the floor as much as he feels them. He’s not angry with her; he’s enraged at himself. More than that he’s simply tired. He’s _so tired_. Tired of losing, tired of loving. “I just need— I need to see you.”

He hears a shuffle, a slight movement and he looks up. She’s turned, a stern look fixed on her face. She crosses her arms, like _she’s_ angry with him and he smiles. Broken and rough, he smiles and stands. It’s all he needed.

\---

_9,248,732_

“Whatever I do, you still won’t be there—“ he cuts himself off, choked and overwhelmed, and slides to the floor.  
“Doctor, I’ll always be here. I’ll always be with you.” There’s a shuffle and then she’s sat beside him, pressed against him and though he won’t look at her, he won’t cause himself that pain, he leans into the contact, the smallest of sighs falling from his lips. He knows this isn’t real, knows he’s on the edge, but then he feels her arms wrap around him and he whimpers quietly.  
“Clara—”  
“Do you remember what I said?”  
He makes no movement no sound, and she sighs, pulls at him until he drops his head onto her lap and she cards her hands through his hair, soothing. The gesture is so easy and so familiar, he has to dig his fingernails into his palms to awaken a more immediate kind of paint to distract from the insanity of it.  
“I said that there’d always be a me and you running around the universe. We’ll always be together somewhere. We’re inescapable,” she hums and rubs gentle circles behind his ear. He curls his legs up, feeling for all the world like a small child, like he did so many years ago, curled up in a barn, with a hand across his brow and a soothing voice above his head. _Fear is a superpower_.

What does that make grief?

\---

_8,499_

She laughs and it fills the room with a crisp golden light. It bathes his heart, warms his skin. He quirks an eyebrow and she giggles. The smile creeps onto his face before he can register it. He winks at her. Then he stands.

 ---

_54,439,508,425_

“I don’t know how to do this without you, Clara.”  
“Blimey now I know it’s serious. You’d never have said to that to me if I was still kicking,” He whips his head round to stare at her and she wrinkles her nose, “Too soon?”  
He says nothing. He leans against the console, crossing his arms and studies the floor. She comes to stand by his side. After a moment, the words grumble from his chest. “I would have said it to you.”  
“I know,” she says quietly, then elbows him in the ribs, “But I don’t want you to think of me as ifs and buts, Doctor. I’m not a would-have-been, or a could-have-been. I’m not your ghost. I was and I am still, thank you very much. Even if I’m just a figment of your imagination.”  
He groans and she laughs, wraps her arms around him. “Sorry. It’s called tough love; you’re _moping_.”  
 “I’m a Time Lord, I don’t mope.”  
“Really?” She quirks a brow and he looks away. “Looks a lot like moping to me. I taught at Cole Hill, I knowit when I see it. Although, now you mention it… there’s a bit of teenage lovesi—“  
 “Clara!” She snorts and he considers if he’s gone insane. He’s seeing her everywhere, hears her in his head, he still talks to her even when she’s not there, and it’s been a day since she died. _A day_. If he’s losing it now, what is he going to be like in a months time? A year? Does it matter? He knew this was coming, but he thought… he thought he could cheat the universe of her death, thought he could bend the rules, keep her until he was ready to let go.  
A sharp pinch in his side brings him out of his reverie. “Ow!”  
“Stop it. You’re letting it get to you, I can see.”   
“How precisely am I meant to not let it get to me, Clara Oswald? Knowledge of the universe?” He says sardonically, biting down on the bitter emotions rippling through him, and she smirks tightening her arms around him.  
 “Knowledge of the universe. I like that. You should have used that one more often. Oh don’t look at me like that, you need to get used to referring to me in past tense. I’m dead and that’s that. Stop talking to me, too, it’s _creepy_. Get on with your life, Doctor. Get on with it _right now_.”

 ---

_309,503,453_

He collapses on the floor, torment taking over his limbs. He feels like a puppet, like his strings have been sliced. He’s nothing but a useless heap of scrap wood. His eyelids drop and his head thuds against the wall. In his mind, he walks into the TARDIS, Clara stands, leaning against the console, watching him.

“I wish I’d seen this jacket more. Where did you get it from?”  
He frowns, shrugs half heartedly. “Back of the wardrobe.”   
“It’s good,” she eyes him appreciatively and even though he knows, even though he’s sure he’s going mad, hearing and seeing her every minute since her death, he still can’t suppress the shiver that licks down his spine. This is so fucked up.  
“I mean, your usual coat is good. The red lining and all. You know how I feel about that one, but _this_ ,” she sucks in a breath and catches his eye. He strides towards her and she grins, huffing out a breath when he encloses her in a tight hug. She laughs quietly in his ear and wraps her arms around him in turn. He buries himself in the memory of her skin, the way her hair tickles his face when he kisses her neck, the flutter of her eyelids.

She smells like violets. Books, grass, dirt. Starlight. Death.

 ---

_722,093,214,872_

She kneels on the steps before him, her hands resting on his knees. She murmurs to him, but he doesn’t look at her. This is too much. He’s losing it. He’s losing his grip on reality, on life, on himself. He doesn’t know what’s happening anymore. She takes his hands in her own and kisses his bloodied knuckles, his palms, his fingertips. She pulls him in from the lapels of his jacket, kisses his forehead, his temples, his cheekbones, his chin. Her lips press softly against his own and before he realises what he’s doing he kisses her back, his hands wrapping in her hair. It starts gentle but the agony catches up, the shadow looms over so he deepens the kiss, keens as her tongue curls under the backs of his teeth, glimmers across his own. He bites her lip, draws blood, her nails digging into his scalp. He groans quietly and pulls back. How can this feel so real? How can this possibly feel real? She hovers in front of his face and waits.

He opens his eyes and she speaks. “ _Get up_.”

\---

_39,385_

“How long have I been doing this?” It’s not a question he expects her to answer, but of course she does anyway. She slips her hand in his and squeezes.  
“Since the beginning of time, and no time at all.”  
 “You sounded suspiciously like me there, Clara.” She beams at him, and he can feel his bones creak with the weight of his years. “Thanks.”   
“That wasn’t a compliment. You shouldn’t ever sound like me, you shouldn’t have ever—“ he squeezes his eyes shut. _Shouldn’t have ever tried to be anything like me, if you hadn't you'd still be alive_.  
“Hey, come on,” she brushes a stray curl away from his forehead and cups his face, “It’s not all bad. This eternity lark. You’ve seen me for five minutes of it every day… sort of.” He sighs and leans into her touch. “Better than most people get.”   
He concedes, and shifts to kiss her palm. Her skin is so soft.  
“You can do better than this, though. Five minutes is _ages_ , in context. You’ve had your five minutes, Doctor. Time to move.”

 ---

 _730,026,980,739_ _or, Today_.

The grief is still too close, too real. He can feel it burning under his skin, acidic and bitter in his mouth. He hasn’t had time to stop, hasn’t had time to break down and howl, beat the ground with his fists until they’re bloodied and broken. A Lord of Time and yet he has none. He can’t take it for himself, not even a second to fall into the depth of her demise, the gaping breach left in her absence, warm and enticing. He wants to collapse into it. He wants to drop to his knees and wrap himself in the pull left from her, envelope himself in the searing covering of her quietus, and lose himself in turn.

He’s grateful that he doesn’t have the TARDIS, for once he is grateful. She would hum and lock him in, send him only to rooms where he couldn’t break anything including himself. She’d keep him safe. Stop him from burning, stop him from unleashing a reign of hell around him. But she isn’t here to stop him, so he lets himself burn. Lets the pain ignite and flare through his veins, lets it dance behind his eyes and needle in his fingers. He’s been talking to her this whole time, Clara, like she’s still here. Like she’s just standing out of focus, a fraction of a second out of sync with him so that he can’t see her but she’s still _there_. He filled his voice with cocky bravado and smirked until the silence she left cracked like a whip against his eardrums and he stumbled, hearts catching in his throat, eyes prickling with tears he won’t shed.

Her painting in the room was too much. Too cruel and yet it felt like a kickstart in his lungs, spurring him into action. She was counting on him. She needed him. He could escape, he’d done this a thousand times, and she’d be there waiting. There she appeared in the TARDIS, in his mind, a safe house even when he was reluctant to admit her, her back to him, and a chalk board. It doesn’t surprise him. He knows it’s starting, he can feel his mind unravelling, but Clara’s there in front of him again, and he can’t bring himself to care. He’s old, why can’t he be mad, too? Why can’t he let go and let delirium take him? Why can’t he lose? Why does he always have to fight? Always have to win?

He talks to her like she’s there, and he can hear her answering in his mind, witty and sharp and teasing. Taunting, berating, suggesting. Alive, but not. No matter how much he wishes it, no matter how much he tries, she’s Not Alive. Clara Not Alive. Clara Dead Clara Gone Clara Lost Clara Clara _Clara_.

His hearts turn to icy lead in his chest when he comes across the grave. He tries to put other words to it, ditch, pit, trench, but his mind hisses and crackles, whispering _grave, her grave_ in his head, the words burning into his retinas. He prays for the first time in his life that she isn’t in the bottom of it. Prays with every inch of his being that whoever did this, whoever put him here, hasn’t put her at the bottom of it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it anymore, couldn’t make himself fight if she were at the bottom. He pauses mid way, questioning why he’s really doing this, why he’s even fighting at all, until a voice suspiciously like Clara’s sounds in his mind like a klaxon and he moves.

He’s almost at the end, almost out almost free when he hits the wall. Impenetrable, immoveable, unyielding. Clara’s death stares him in the face with its crystalline beauty, and he sags against it, feeling his hope leave him. He doesn’t want to move past it, he doesn’t want to move on, go through. He wants to stay here with her forever, in whatever form he can take her in. Her life, her smile, her death. The empty space beside him where she should be. Where she should be admonishing him for giving up, for giving in and curling up like a small boy in the face of violence. He closes his eyes, runs through the TARDIS in his mind, collapses into the landscape she provides.

“I can’t keep doing this, I can’t— I can’t— always do this! It’s not fair, Clara! It’s just not fair why can’t I just lose!” He’s tearing around the TARDIS until he comes down to where he knows she’ll be stood, back to him, chalk board and silence leering him in the face. She’s there, of course she is, but what strikes him is what's written in front of him.

NO!

“But I can remember, Clara. You don’t understand. I can remember it all. Every time… and you’ll still be gone.” He can feel tears in his eyes, feel the reality of it cut into his chest and he has to sit down, he has to fall because he lost his strength the second she died, “Whatever I do, you still won’t be there—“ he drops to the floor, covers his face in his hands and lets the pain wash over him. He invites it in, welcomes it to come and take him away from himself. There’s nothing he can do to save her, nothing he can do to bring her back. One of the most powerful races in all the known universe, the last of his kind, the dregs at the bottom of his soul the only thing left, and he is powerless.

“Doctor. You are not the only person who ever lost someone,” he hers her voice now more real than ever. The warmth that cascades around him, like she’s draping a blanket around his shoulders from speaking his name alone. He refuses to look up, refuses to look her in the face because she’s going to make him fight and he knows it. She’s going to make him move, save himself, like she always does. “It’s the story of everybody; get over it.” He wants to shout, wants to swear and lash out because it’s cruel but it’s true and he knows it more than anyone. “ _Beat it_. Break free.”

Then, because his psyche is either too kind or too cruel, he feels her hand on his cheek and looks up. He can see her, in the same state, the same clothes, the same smile and kindness pouring from her eyes. “Doctor it’s time.” She smiles and he watches her, breathes in the moment, feels it fill his lungs his stomach his bones, watches the way her eyes crinkle just slightly at the corners, the way she leans in as she breaths, the way her thumb strokes his skin. “Get up, off your arse, and _win_.” Her hand disappears all too soon, but it was there, he felt it, and he won’t let her waste her time on him for no reason. Never again.

He stands. He fights back.


	12. Hell Bent: I'm burnin' through the sky.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’ll tear apart the universe, lose himself to madness just at the glimmer of saving her. He can pocket her in the space between a heartbeat, but they lose either way. The Doctor's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so fucked up I’m so fu ck ed. A long time since an update for many reasons, but here we finally are. The last part to this fic, but not the series (more ficlits and oneshots will be arriving in due course). It’s been a hell of journey I HOPE I HAVE DONE THEM JUSTICE.

“Let’s do it, like we’ve done everything else. Together.” He smiles at her and offers his hand. They’ve laughed and lived and loved, fought and danced and glittered across the stars. He never wanted to lose her, never wanted to be apart from her, but it wasn’t just that. There was so much more to it, so many variables. He didn’t want to be left behind. He didn’t want to be alone ( _again_ ), he didn’t want to keep going keep fighting keep breathing if she weren’t by his side.  
“How about we just don’t?” He smiles and he can see the wonders of the cosmos sparkling under her skin, twinkling in her eyes, “Why don’t we just, fly away somewhere.”  
“Ha! Oh, that’d be great wouldn’t it?” He thinks about it, for a moment, considers it. The Doctor and Clara Oswald. Endless. Everlasting in a small blue box. Immortal, constant, deathless. Together.  
“God yeah.” She laughs, and he smiles, feels the sound tingle in his veins. He loves her laugh, her unconfined giddiness, decorating the air like bubbles. The smile remains on his face as he watches her, hearts jittery in his chest and he thinks, _she’s right, we should say things.  
_ He doesn’t. “Good luck, Clara.”  
“Good luck, Doctor.”  
They press the button simultaneously, his eyes flickering to the device in his hand. He can’t decide what he wants more, what’s the least selfish option, what’s the most. _He_ should forget, he should be the one to have everything wiped from his mind because he’ll still keep fighting for her. It would hurt so much less, though drastically more. He’ll throw himself into the universe and tear it apart, every last atom separated from the other in order to have her, to keep her. Hold her. But he’s _selfish_ , he’s so selfish. Why should he forget? Four billion years of fighting for her, _four billion_. It’s not his turn, it’s not fair, he can’t forget her _how could he possibly forget Clara Oswald?_ His stomach turns and then he feels Clara’s finger brush against his own, warmth and love flooding through the tiny breach.

“So, what happens now?” She lets go and he holds the device precariously in his hand. This one tiny object that could be his downfall, or his making. One stupid tiny device to separate the unmeasurable heights of their dovetailed souls.  
“Suppose we just um, we just wait a minute I suppose.” He can’t forget her. He can’t look at her.  “One of us… one of us wi—“ she cuts herself off and he gets the sense the words have lodged in her throat; he can feel the same painful jaggedness in his chest. _Her eyes_. Her ridiculous, gigantic, soul encompassing eyes. “I don’t think I could ever forget you.”

He wants to smile, wants to touch her face and comfort her but then he feels it. The ripple of the sea tickles his toes and he suddenly can’t remember her favourite colour, doesn’t know if she ever had one. “Clara I don’t think you’re ever gonna have to.” He lets the device fall, and steadies himself on the console, feeling his world begin to tilt. He doesn’t remember how she takes her tea. The way her hair feels as it falls across his face when they kiss. If she prefers baths or showers. Does she cook? Too much is disappearing from his mind, too much too quickly.  
“No.” Her voice skates across the air.   
 He needs to say so much, he needs to tell her everything and he needs to tell her _now_. How much time does he have? Was she there when he was inside a Dalek? Why did he buy two cups of coffee in Glasgow with no one to share it with? “Run like hell.” He drops to his knees and he can see her hands shaking. What did they feel like on his skin?  
“What?”  
 “Run like hell because you always need to, laugh at everything, ‘cause it’s always funny,” he thinks he tries to smile at her, to comfort her, and something about betrayal and a moon flare in his mind but they meaning nothing.  
 “No stop it you’re saying goodbye don’t say goodbye!” Her hand wraps around his ( _that’s what it feels like_ ) her words urgent and breaking. He’s hurting her, _why is he be hurting her?_  
“Never be cruel and never be cowardly, and if you ever are, always make amends.”  
“Stop it!” He falls back, memories ripping from his chest, gaping holes and canyons left in their stead, her voice washing over him, “Stop, stop it!”  
He wants to tell her so much. He wants to tell her how he aches for her even when she leaves the room, how embarrassingly infatuated with her he is but he doesn’t care because it’s her, how she’s always there to keep him right. How he drove himself mad to try and save her because he would have gone mad anyway, how he doesn’t think he can touch another person again because her body is starlight in his veins. How much her loves her silly dimples, her knees, the wonder in her smile. He wants to tell her how much he loves her, how it’s deeper than anything he’s ever felt and ever will feel, so he says, “Never eat pears, they’re too squishy and they always make your chin wet that one’s quite important write it down!” He points his finger to emphasis the _I love you_ just in case she missed it because he doesn’t really know what he’s saying and he can’t remember what she sounds like when she laughs.  
“I didn’t meant to do this, I’m sorry,” her hand flutters across his chest as the other tightens its grip on his own, grief and horror and 17 other emotions he’s sure are Clara Specific but can’t distinguish anymore pouring from her eyes.  
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” He tries to smile, tries to comfort her because _fuck_ he’s hurting her but in a few seconds he won’t remember anything about her. Time is stripping away his heart, pealing away the layers of her until, very quickly all he knows is what she looks like right now and that he feels her in the marrow of his bones. “I went too far I broke all my own rules,” his voice breaks, his lungs tugging in oxygen as he fights to stay conscious, fights to remember this; her tears, her eyes, the warmth of her body, “I became the hybrid! _This_ is right. I accept.”  
“I can’t,” her voice is barely above a whisper, agony rippling in every inflection, “There has to be something I can do.”  
He staggers, can feel his control slackening, feel it slipping through his fingers. He doesn’t remember her smile. None of them. Only this expression, this pain and torment before him. “Smile for me, go on, Clara Oswald,” he can see the corners of her mouth curl the slightest of degrees, but it’s not enough. He’s sure there was once a smile that had him on his knees. One that made every cell in his body glow. One that filled up his hearts as it devoured them, “One last time,” quiet, the words reach out from his chest towards her soul.  
“How could I smile?” He barely hears her as black creeps into his vision. His lungs feel punctured at the sight of her tears.  
“It’s okay, don’t you worry,” he holds her gaze, the curving beauty of her suffering, “I’ll remember you.”

His muscles feel raw, there’s a pressure in his hand and weightless force crushing his chest. Black seeps in, licking into his consciousness, lulling him into relinquishing his hold. There is a face of someone in front of him, starlight weeping, and without understanding why, his body spikes in sadness. Words reach for his hearts, and find no hold.


	13. Epilogue: I don't wanna stop at all.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor meets a woman in a diner. She’s lovely really, and for some reason, listens to every word he says. Why is he telling her this again? The Doctor's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha SIKE ! !! merry christmas, ya filthy animals. Grab some booze and Last Christmas and pretend it’s not over. THIS HAS BEEN A PRIVILEGE AND A JOY, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH. I absolutely could not have done this without your kind words and encouragement.

It’s strange. It’s like losing a tooth, in a way. The empty space where you forget the feeling of what was there before, the tender skin, spots of blood and spike of pain when you stick your tongue in it. He can’t remember what was there before, but there’s a distinct shape of what it _might_ have been. It’s an unsettling feeling, this emptiness that he feels nothing for. It doesn’t upset him per say, but he catches himself sometimes, feeling sad for no reason. Clara. That’s all he’s figured; Clara and she was important. He chalks it up to his 2,000 years and shrugs his shoulders.

He’s sat talking to this girl, _not girl definitely a woman_ , with eyes bigger than they have any sense to be. Big and warm and… nostalgic? He’s not sure. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail that feels familiar, but it could just be his childish urge to tug it and run away. She smiles the most breathtaking smile, fills his drink and clucks at him when he apologises for having no money. He explains he’s never carried money, never seen the point of it, and instead of looking at him strangely, instead of frowning and kicking him out, she laughs and her eyes glitter as she pushes a glass of icy lemonade towards him. He’s interested in her, feels the stereotype of the customer and the barman worming its way into his body, making him _talk_ of all things. He tells her about this Clara. Clara who left a gnawing rift in his bones. Clara who fills his head with dark spaces and sharp corners. Clara who stops his breath without ever showing her face.

“When something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. I know there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express, I know we sat together, in the Cloisters, and she told me something very important but I’ve no idea what she said.” He frowns and tries to emphasis. It was important. This thing. The Very Important thing she said to him, but it just won’t present itself. Every time he think he has it, it scurries away into deeper recesses of his brain. “Or what she looked like. Or how she talked, or laughed…” He feels it again now, the sadness that locks his lungs up tight. He shrugs it off and looks back to the woman in front of him. She’s listened this whole time, without complaint, and as though she was actually interested. _Well, she’s in a diner in the middle of nowhere, she’s probably bored out of her mind_. “There’s nothing there. Just nothing.”

“Are you looking for her?” she asks, leaning forward on folded arms.  
He sighs and slumps a little in his seat. “I’m trying,” and he is, he _really_ is. But he just can’t quite… It just doesn’t… He frowns at his own brain stalling and grinding to a halt.  
“She could be anyone… right? You don’t know who you’re looking for, I mean, she could be me?” she smiles and gives a half decrepitating shrug, “For all you know.”  
“There’s one thing I know about her. Just one thing. If I met her again, I’d absolutely know,” he smiles and feels his blood thrum. He _would_. Someone who left that significant of an impact on him? _He’d know_. “I have a feeling that we were here, you know? I think that we were here together once.” He spins around and scans the empty diner. It’s the red seats. “I’m sure I remember. We were here,” he gestures to the offending seats in question as though they’ll jump up and give him the answer. Red, something about red. Then it clicks. “ _Stupid_ Doctor. Amy and Rory! It was Amy and Rory.”   
“What about your TARDIS? Hey? Have you found that yet?” She interrupts his thoughts, her voice a fraction less steady than it was before.   
“No. Somebody’s moved it from London, I’m still looking. But this diner,” he walks over and leans against the counter, “wasn’t always here was it? Used to be on the other side of the hill.”  
“Well, maybe someone will find your TARDIS for you,” she smiles a brisk smile, and he thinks for a moment he sees something else there, disappointment maybe. Something worse. She’s hard to read. She starts to walk around the counter as he strums the guitar and comes to a stop in front of him, wiggling her shoulders a little as though preparing herself. “Can I ask you something?”  
“Of course,” he plucks the guitar absently in his hand, purely for the want of something to do. He’s getting antsy again. Getting the itch to move. To go. To find her. _Move_.  
“Were you together?”  
 “Who?”   
She hesitates, frowns a little as the word comes out of her mouth like she's not used to saying it, “Clara.”  
“Oh,” he can feel a flush creep up his neck, “I think so. I don’t— I mean. But there are, um, memories, of being alone but… _not_. I can piece together from the gaps like I said, but not— maybe.” He has distinctly _vivid_ dreams, where he wakes up panting and achingly hard. He swallows and avoids her eyes, shrugging as nonchalantly as he can.

He can see her feet in his vision, and he lifts his head in time to catch the hint of tears in her eyes before she leans up and presses a very gentle kiss to his lips. He doesn’t really know what to do; his hands go limp and mostly he just feels stunned. He becomes very acutely aware of the air around them. The smell of her, the warmth of her mouth, the tenderness. The way her nose slightly squashes against his. A sense of her holding back. A crackling feeling of finality and then she drops back onto her heels, pauses, searching his face. Nods, and turns to walk away.

He turns himself not sure what to make of it. Not that he’s not _used_ to be kissed but not quite like that. He shakes off the unsettling feeling, and lets the breach in his hearts slip out through his fingers, transforming themselves into a tune he can’t seem to stop playing.  
“What Clara told you in the cloisters?”  
He stops and turns. He ponders briefly, what with her being so interested, if she’d help him find her. Clara. What it would be like, having this woman travelling with him, helping him piece everything together. He’d like that, he thinks. “I don’t remember a single thing about it.”  
“You said memories become stories… when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs.”  
“That would be nice.” He smiles at the thought. It is a nice thought; his loss of her translating into a song. He feels like if Clara could be anything, anything in the world, and she could be really, she would be a song. And as soon as he finds her, that’s what he’ll play. Just for her.  
“Yeah, it would be, wouldn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, both the titles from this chapter and the one previous come from Don't Stop Me Now by Queen, which if anyone noticed, was playing in the diner. Not only that, but it was the version that was sung in The Mummy on the Orient Express. I was going to add it in somewhere but I may use it at another point, on a oneshot in the future perhaps.


End file.
